MOVING A CHURCH.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 10 July 1925, Page 9

MOVING A CHURCH.

TRANSFERRED STONE BY STONE,

A village church in Lancashire is being moved stone by stone to a new site a mile and a half away (says the Daily Chronicle). It belongs to the deserted village of Grane, or Haslingden Grane, through which the old highway runs from Bury to Blackburn. The new site is at Holden Wood. Fifty years ago Gran© was a thriving village; to-day it is a place of ruins and memories, with rooliess mills, an old hall standing empty, and tows of tenantless houses falling to pieces. This is due to the progress of neighbouring towns. The Bury and District Water Board acquired the village about 30 years ago for reservoirs, and eventually the whole of the property except the parish church and the Wesleyan chapel passed into their possession. The local mills were rebuilt at Haslingden, and the workpeople moved too. Grane people have only recently decided to take their church away from the deserted village. A mission hall was built at Holden Wood; services were held there at night and at the parish church in the morning. The parishioners—nearly all mill workers—have now raised over £IBOO towards the £6OOO it is estimated the removal will cost. The last service held in the church was conducted hv the Bishop of Manchester, when he spoke words of encouragement to the people who had undertaken such a huge task. It is probable that the final cost of the removal will be nearer £BOOO than £6000.' But, says the vicar, it will cost less to remove the old church than to build a new one. Though built in 1868, it did not liecome a parish church until 1883, only a few years before the turning-out of the village began. The original cost was £3OOO. The building is quite handsome for its period, and hap one ancient relic, a hell said to have come from Whalley Abbey, a Cistercian house destroyed under Henry VIII. The builders are at work moving the pews and fittings to the old and ruined schoolroom across the road, where they will be kept until the re-erected church is ready for,them. This is probably the last use to which the old schoolroom will ever he put. There are no people left in Grane itself to go to church, but old people born in Grane tell tales of the illicit whisky still for which Grane was once notorious, and the cock-pit is yet- to be found by those who know where to look for it. A century ago the blacksmith of Grane wap haled before the Magistrates for forging Hike heads intended to avenge the “field of Peterloo.”'