St Mary's RC Church Haslingden
The church was opened with a High Mass on Sunday November 13, 1859.
Dedicated to Our Lady under her title of the Immaculate Conception, the church replaced a temporary building that had served the mission as a Mass centre for the previous five years. The means for building the new church had been provided largely by donations sent by readers of the Catholic weeklies, who had responded generously to the appeals made by the founding pastor, Rev Thomas Martin. Bishop William Turner presided at the opening ceremonies, and the large congregation on that day subscribed a further £125 towards the mission fund. [J Dunleavy, Haslingden Catholics, 1859-1965].
Community relations between Catholics and Protestants proved to be extremely fraught in the late 1860s. At Haslingden in 1868 a band of militant anti-Catholics, known as the Murphyites, attempted a march on the church. Local Catholics naturally were anxious for the safety of St Mary’s and as the mob approached the church a young Irishman fired several pistol shots into the air. This caused the menacing crowd to halt, consider their own safety, and deciding discretion was better than valour, turned on ytheir heals and fled. Yet it would be some time before religious animosities diminished, and for this reason an armed guard was maintained at the church for some time.
The church’s debt to Davitt – the man who had fired the shots back in 1868 - was recognised in 1908 when a mural tablet to his memory was unveiled and a two-tone manual organ, designed to the specifications of John Leopold Byrne (a former president of the Haslingden Irish League club) was installed. The memorial had been made possible largely through the efforts and generosity of the Irish club members and St Mary’s parishioners and serves as constant reminder of the locality’s debt to this great Irishman.
The connection with Davitt and Ireland has been marked on other occasions, such as his birth centenary in 1946, when his son, Dr Robert Davitt represented the family, while among the civic dignitaries were the Lord Mayor of Manchester and the Mayor of Haslingden. The sermon was preached by the Vicar General, Mgr Masterson, who spoke with pride of his Irish ancestry. Fifty years later Fr Thomas Davitt, CM, a grandson of the patriot, preached a homily before a capacity congregation at St Mary’s that included a special envoy from the Irish Government. Equally memorable events are planned for 2006.