A Dog's Life — Stop 3
Shirley at St. Joseph's Church
Shirley was having her usual mooch round Mossley looking for titbits when she saw lots of people gathered around the new modern looking building on Argyll Street. She loved a public event as that meant there would be buns… and crumbs!
She remembered that the old Catholic church had been demolished and this must be the opening of the new one - how exciting! Everyone was there in their Sunday best and men in robes were there too from the diocese. The Mayor Geoffrey Hayden was proudly showing people the programme for the day it included adverts for the local shops.
Shirley was keen to see how the new church looked as she had loved the ornate old one with the school on the side. She had been told that originally the school was inside the church with a screen separating the altar during school hours.
She also knew that the old church had been there since 1862 and that before that, services were held in the upper room of a building in Smith Street, off Lees Road, known as “Th’owd Garrett”. Lots of different churches had met at this building before the beautiful big churches of Mossley were built.
Mossley was getting much busier these days with more and more cars and Shirley really had to be careful crossing the roads. She got distracted when a bunch of young people came round the corner - the boys were ‘mods’ and very sharply dressed and the girl’s dresses were above their knees! Everything was changing in the Swinging Sixties!
The car park opposite St. Joseph’s was the site of the temperance hall.
Th’owd Garrett on Lees Road was a meeting place for congregations without their own church.
The current St. Joseph’s school was built in 1933.