SLACK Lane Baptists, near Oakworth, owe their origins to Joseph Shaw – pastor at Turkey Street – who broke away with some of the Keighley members in 1819 and worshipped first in a chamber at Bogthorn before building this chapel two years later.
The Duke of Devonshire subsequently gave land for a burial ground on the opposite side of the road.
In its earlier years, Slack Lane was nicknamed Shaw’s Chapel in deference to a man who never turned down a contribution, however small, declaring that even a penny “would buy a pennyworth of nails”.
Early members delighted in a joke about a stranger passing the chapel and asking a boy what it was called.
When told “Slack Chapel”, he replied, “Nay, never, my lad. Folks cannot be very slack who come to a place so isolated.”
This photograph dates from the turn of the 19th century while the original chapel was being used as a Sunday School between 1880 and 1986 when adult services were conducted in the larger chapel nearby, now converted into apartments.
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