A 128 years of history crumbled when the influential Brunswick Methodist Chapel, Burnley, was demolished back in the mid-sixties.

The church, which had been patronised by some of the town’s leading families, such as the Greys and the Thornbers, since the mid 1800s, was bulldozed to make way for a bowling alley.

A £150,000, three-storey office block, with a bowling alley on the lower ground floor, was set to rise where the Brunswick had stood, opposite the town hall, in Manchester Road.

At the time it had 80 Sunday school scholars, but they weren’t subject to the same treatment as those who had first joined its ranks in the 1830s.

For if members committed any misdemeanour they were compelled to ‘stand forth’ holding cards with the words ‘talkative’, ‘swearer’ or ‘Sabbath breaker’ inscribed.

Occasionally they would also be made to ‘feel the rod’ particularly for misconduct at divine service.

Young folk would also be told by the Methodist leaders not to court each other on the Sabbath or partake in gossip.

Times were hard in the mid 1800s, but a menu for a Methodist Quarter Day dinner showed guests tucked in to roast beef and plum pudding.

The church had its origins at Lane Bridge, in a room over a grocer’s shop and smithy and a tub was used for both a desk and pulpit. As word spread across town and the congregation grew, another room was taken at an old mill in the Salford district of town.

When the foundation stone was eventually laid for the new church, mill owners stopped production so their workers could watch the ceremony.

A major event on the Brunswick calendar was its decorated Christmas tree and for 93 years people made special journeys to see the festive event and so raise thousands of pounds for charity.

When the chapel closed — the three Methodist circuits of Brunswick, Wesley and Fulledge were combined into one — trust secretary Lawrence Herbert said the drift of population away from the town centre meant church numbers had dropped to 200 and that it cost £40 a week to maintain.