Ok everyone …. the Lych Gate is open again

It’s that brick, stone and wooden tower which is one of the iconic images of where we live.

2024

So much so that many of us take it for granted and barely realized that after 137 years it needed some tender care and attention.

2024

It had been erected to commemorate Queen Victoria’s jubilee, and was a bold statement of support for the old St Clement’s Church which dated from 1800 and stood on the site of an older wattle and daub chapel which had been built at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Today it is perhaps surprising to discover that there had been a time when we had two churches which both went under the name of St Clement’s and that this had its roots in the  Great Chorlton Church schism, when the congregation split over where to build a new church.

The 1800 building was seen to be too small and various sites for a new one were explored, but with no agreement one wing went off, accepted the offer of a parcel of land on Edge Lane and built a new church.

But the authorities retained the old church as the place for baptisms, marriages and burials, and one of the wealthy members of the congregation donated money to enhance the old church.

This was Cunlifee Brooks who lived at Barlow Hall and his donations included money for a grand new east window and the impressive lych gate.

2024

In 1993 the gate had a make over which concentrated on the roof of the bell tower.

But earlier this year a more extensive renovation was undertaken by the City Council looking to use materials which were sympathetic to the original.

The work was finished last week, and the scaffolding came down revealing the structure pretty much as it would have looked like in 1887.

And over the last week and a bit heaps of people have gone down to the green and taken their own pictures to which I now add mine, along with one taken back in 1980 when it had yet to reach its hundredth birthday.

Since then it has stood over a series of archaelogical digs, and watched as more than 350 of the headstones from the graveyard were removed and the site landscapped.

Location; The Lych Gate

Pictures; the restored Lych Gate, 2024, and in 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

1980