Burnley's places of worship to be catalogued for heritage project
7:51am Saturday 1st September 2012 in News
HISTORIC places of worship, ancient and modern, across Burnley will be catalogued as part of a new heritage project.
Faith leaders have pinpointed at least eight locations, Christian and Muslim, which will benefit from a £49,800 Heritage Lottery Fund grant.
Two part-time positions will be funded through the Building Bridges in Burnley initiative, which will culminate in a travelling exhibition and hardback book.
Parish church St Peter’s, St Andrew’s in Colne Road, St John’s RC in Ivy Street and the Sion Baptist Church will be reviewed, possibly alongside the United Reformed Church.
And the Ibrahim mosque, in Clegg Street, Ghausia mosque in Abel Street, Abu Bakr mosque, Brougham Street, and Darul Islah mosque, also Colne Road, as well as possibly the North Street mosque, will also feature.
Canon Peter Hapgood-Strickland, Building Bridges chairman and St Andrew’s minister, said: “We are very grateful to the Heritage Lottery Fund for their support and look forward to engaging as many people as possible with this exciting new project.”
Several volunteering opportunities will also be created for young people and adults as part of the initiative.
Sara Hilton, Heritage Lottery Fund North West head, added: “Heritage can provide opportunities from people across the community to mix and learn from one another, giving everyone, and particularly young people, a very real sense of who they are and where they come from.”
The project will explore the social and artistic impact of the places of worship through research, photographs and recorded interviews with people closely associated with the sites.
Organisers will also be compiling an online blog as part of the work, which will run until December 2014.
