Monument record 4494/0/0 - Risley Chapel

Presbyterian Chapel built for a congregation formed by Thomas Risley, a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, who resigned his Fellowship on the passing of the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Although shortley after this event he accepted episcopal ordination, he was unwilling to proceed further and returned to his estate at Culcheth where he practiced medicine and engaged in private preaching. In 1689 a barn at Culcheth was registered as a meeting-house and in 1706-7 the chapel was erected 'upon a piece of land called Fifty Croft in cross lane, in Culcheth, near the dwelling house of the said Thomas Risley'. Risley died in 1716 and was succeeded in the ministry by his son John. Under subsequent ministers the society came to accept heterodox doctrines until, in 1838, following a succesfull petition for the removal of the then Unitarian minister and trustees, the building passed into the care of what became the Presbyterian Church of England.
The Chapel has walls of brickwork and the roof is covered with stone slates. Detailed architectual description in (1).
There is and adjoining Manse (2).

<1> Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), 1994, An Inventory of Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting Houses in the North of England, Lancashire Number 66 (Book). SCH4548.

<2> Ordnance Survey, 1893-96, Ordnance Survey County Series (Epoch 1) 25 inch to 1 mile - Lancashire (Maps and Plans). SCH3847.