Rivington Church

Rivington Church, which pleasingly has no saintly dedication, is in the pretty little village between Blackburn and Bolton, which it shares with the Unitarian Rivington Chapel, which was once Presbyterian. In its grounds, there is a remarkable number of seventeenth-century gravestones, one of which goes back to James I, in 1616:

Others contain mysterious carvings, which have been connected to the old Anderton Chapel and even pre-Christian times. One thing which they successfully communicate is that everything is decaying, be that artwork, human bodies and even churches. Only Christ and His people shall outlive the age and outlast the world. All else is crumbling, fading, falling, dying.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

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