Hope Chapel, Manchester

Hope Chapel, Manchester was established in 1837, but it did not officially open for worship until December 1838 (it was later enlarged in 1843). John Poore, from Highbury College, served as the church’s first minister, 1838-1853. In 1853 he and Richard Fletcher, pastor at Grosvener Street Independent Chapel (see letter 172) left Manchester to work in Australia as missionaries with the Colonial Missionary Society. See Benjamin Nightingale, Lancashire Nonconformity; Or, Sketches, Historical and Descriptive, of the Congregational and Old Presbyterian Churches in the County. Churches of Manchester, Oldham, Ashton, etc. 6 vols. (Manchester: John Heywood, [1890–1893]), 217-221; Albert Peel, These Hundred Years: A History of the Congregational Union, 1831-1931 (London: Congregational Union of England and Wales, 1931), 199.