How do you summarise a lifetime (over 60 years) spent within the community of Chorley Old Road Methodist Church?
Just looking at the former Church and Sunday School the memories come flooding back and thankfully, as the Church is a listed building, my memories and those of thousands of others will be locked into the very fabric of the buildings for many years to come.
Where to start? Well, many people will remember my father, Bob Whittle, whose personality and passion loomed large over the Church and Sunday School during the 1950s & 60s. He was Sunday School Superintendent for 28 years, principle comedian in the pantomimes (and COR still has the shield it was given for winning the best pantomime in the Circuit for so many years), organised the Sermons & Singers, the Eisteddfod, Socials & Dances and still found time to paint classrooms as well! A hard act to follow! Being born into a family so steeped in Methodism, it is not surprising that my brother, Michael, and I found ourselves heavily involved in Church activities from an early age – and of course, the 50s & 60s were the ‘golden age’ for Church and Sunday School attendance. Both always seemed ‘packed’ especially at Sermons time (morning, afternoon & evening) when the Church ‘shook’ with the power of the singing. There was something about the energy and commitment of the adults who had come back from the war and really did want to create a ‘better world’ for their children.
And so Michael and I graduated through the ‘Beginners’ with Freda Entwistle (who died tragically young and we still have the ‘Birthday Chair’ given in her memory) & Bertha Rigby – succeeded in later years by Ann Nelson & Kathleen Lewis, to the ‘Primary’, and then came the day we both really looked forward to, when we emerged into the ‘grown up’ world of the main Sunday School. Again we graduated through the classes until somehow we were deemed suitable to run the ‘top class’ (youth group) on our own! We still look back with pride & fondness on the productions we did with that group of ‘Jo Jonah’, ‘Joseph & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’, ‘Godspell’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ which were current hit shows at that time (the early 1970s).
In terms of Church-related activities, it wasn’t enough to go to Sunday School, we were in the Cubs led by Roy & Ian Needham and Clarys Dawson and in the Scouts run by John Entwistle (the Scouts were succeeded by the Boys Brigade under Ronnie Halliwell). And once you were 11 you were allowed into the ‘special world’ of Sunday Night Youth Club (after Church of course) presided over with great ‘patience’ by Jack Corfield. It was incidentally from the humble youth club beginnings that we went on to form the ‘Invictors’, a well-known beat group of the mid 1960s – but that’s another story! On top of all this there was mid-week youth club/badminton club on Tuesdays & Thursdays (if you could fit it in as well as your homework) which my wife Judith & I found ourselves helping to run for our children and others on Friday nights in the 1980s & 90s. Another off-shoot of those Sunday School/ Youth Club days was the Amateur Dramatic Society ‘CORMADS’ which today has a direct descendant in the MARCO players.
I could go on, of course, about ‘Field Days’, Potato Pie suppers served from the cellar, sliding across highly–talcumed dance floors, Church & Youth Club outings, ‘Gang Shows’, Bazaars, Men’s & Ladies Classes and Committees (a bit before my time), the Guild (a very important social resource for older members), the Centenary Celebrations in 1992, selling the Church and converting the Sunday School and not forgetting meeting my wife, Judith, who I managed to ‘convert’ from Delph Hill (because she says we had a better youth club!). Yet, despite all these memories, I do not feel sad, just thankful for that chapter in my life, and, like the rest of our congregation, I look forward with confidence and renewed optimism to our new life at the Triangle Community Methodist Church.
God Bless - Stuart Whittle
