Welcome to Park Lane Chapel

For over 300 years, our chapel has been a place of tolerance, free thought, service, and community.

Our members embrace a wide variety of different perspectives and theological outlooks. What draws us together is a mutual responsibility to seek meaning and purpose, to make the most of our lives, and to do our part to care for our neighbours and the world. Our roots stem from the Protestant tradition, and our services proudly incorporate the Lord's Prayer and the Bible - but we find wisdom from many other sources as well. The Apostle Paul wrote, "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life" - like Paul, we Unitarians follow the living spirit of divine love, rather than the letter of dogma, in all matters.

We have our roots in the Christian faith, but we salute the faithful of all the great World Religions. We welcome new discoveries and thought; we revere all the good the past has known, but we refuse to live on our capital, for we hold the best is yet to be. Our faith, therefore, is always a continuing adventure.

The Chapel was built in 1697 by a congregation of Worshippers dissenting from the Church of England. As it says in the Chapel History written by the then Minister, George Fox: "While some of the congregation contributed according to their means, others brought their horses and carts to help; and again some laboured with their hands." (Fox 1897). The first Minister, the Rev. James Wood, was ejected, following the Act of Uniformity in 1662, from St Thomas's Church, Ashton.