A brief look back at the places of worship in a South Yorkshire mining village In the 19th century Carcroft was a quiet little farming community, part of the parish of Owston. The parish church in Owston served the spiritual needs of the community. An indication that this was central to parish life is the fact that the churchyard is the home of the war memorial. In the mid 19th century the village began to grow and in 1850 a small Methodist Chapel was built, later to become ‘Dick Smith's’ or the Merevale Stores, a row of cottages behind it was Chapel Street.
As the population expanded, the Wesleyan Methodists built the large and imposing chapel on Skellow Road, (close by where the Co-op built their shops and opposite the present day Asda store ). The chapel had a splendid organ and the rear wall of the choir stalls was actually a folding screen which could be opened to extend the chapel space to include the schoolroom. This is the chapel where my parents married, I was baptised, was a choir-boy and ‘organ-pumper’ (no electric pump) and preached my first sermon here; so it was a sad day for me when it became a timber merchants. In 1932 The Methodist Union took place, but the chapel retained its name as the Wesley Chapel and it was many years later that it united with the former Primitive Methodist chapel on the corner of Station Road (more about that shortly). As will be seen in this picture from Google Maps it is in quite a sad state today.
There was no Anglican church, the parish church being Owston, but a Mission Hall was built. This was a corrugated iron structure across from the shops in Owston Road. (Not the New Village shops, but the ones leading to the traffic lights- I know that they don’t look like it now, but this was once a busy shopping centre). This has now been replaced by the former Baptist Church which stands across from the common land known as the ‘clip-claps’ (the local dialect name for the ‘kissing gates’ in its fence.) stood the Baptist chapel. This chapel has been given a new lease of life as St Michael & All Angels Church.
At the other end of Skellow Road at the junction with Station Road stood the Station Road Methodist Church. It comes as a bit of a surprise to a student of church and chapel architecture that this was a Primitive Methodist chapel. That denomination usually had a fairly simple building, but this had a crenelated tower and a pseudogothic frontage. The two Methodist congregations merged in the 1950s, the Wesleyan chapel closed and the church simply became the Methodist Church. Eventually it too closed and the adjacent, more modern schoolroom became the church. The church building itself was demolished and housing built on the site. I am not sure of dates, but as a guidance, my sister married in the old building in 1962 and my mother's funeral service was in the converted schoolroom in 1986.
St Andrew's Presbyterian Church stood opposite the schools. Built in 1927, this was probably the largest of the non-conformist chapels in the village. In addition to the church itself there was a large schoolroom and other ancillary rooms plus a meeting room over the front porch. Its rooms were used for many purposes over the years, including the visit of the school dentist. The building suffered badly from subsidence which was one of the reasons that it was demolished.
The Salvation Army had no meeting hall, but in the 1930s and early 40s met in a former shop premises on the corner of Trafalgar Street and Park Avenue. They moved into the Co-op hall before merging with Woodlands Citadel just after the war.
I am told that at one time the colliery company supplied the chapels with electricity from the pit generators free of charge (it was 110 volts). ____________________________
As a footnote: It is interesting to note that this village, once a stronghold of Methodism (Wesleyan, Primitive, Salvation Army) alongside Scottish Presbyterianism and Baptist, now has only two places of worship an Anglican and a Roman Catholic. I haven't analysed this, but I think that it could be an interesting field of research [If someone (a student paper perhaps?) does follow this thought up I would be interested to have a copy of your notes/thesis/dissertation/paper.] Its a pattern found throughout the coalfield and is mirrored elsewhere; the slate quarry communities of north-west Wales for example. email to the editor