Cross Street Chapel

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Cross Street Chapel is a Unitarian church in Manchester, England, famous in civic and national life for its contributions to piety and civil society.

[edit] History

The Act of Uniformity 1662, regulated the style of worship in the Church of England. However, many clergy rejected the restrictions, including Rev. Henry Newcome who established his own congregation that same year. The Dissenters' Meeting House was opened in 1694 and holds a special place in the growth of nonconformism within the city.

The building was renamed the Cross Street Chapel and became a Unitarian meeting-house in ????. It was wrecked by a Jacobite mob in 1715, rebuilt and destroyed in a World War II air raid in December 1940. A new building was constructed in 1959 and the present structure dates from 1997. The Gaskell Room of the new building houses a collection of memorabilia of novelist Elizabeth Gaskell.