Ilkeston (North) - Places of Worship
w/e 15 January 2012
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

I've previously trawled through the town and photographed public houses named after animals on an alternative Nature Trail. I've also conducted a similar exercise looking at churches or chapels that have been adapted for other uses, both commercial and private. Although religious premises have appeared many times on the website I have never devoted a whole set of photos to them so to redress the balance this is the first of two pages of images, initially looking at places of the worship in the northern half of the town. Ask anyone how many places of worship there are in Ilkeston from Cotmanhay in the north through to Kirk Hallam in the south and their answer would probably be eight or nine. Given a little thought that figure might rise to the low teens but even I was surprised to discover at least nineteen when I started to list them. So we'll begin our journey through the town at the top end of Church Street in Cotmanhay where the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses stands. Beyond the Hall, the Chinese Take Away and the Rose and Crown pub in this view down Church Street is the site of Christ Church which stood on the corner of Vicarage Street.

The old Christ Church built in 1848 was demolished in 1983 due to mining subsidence and was replaced by a more modern building further along Vicarage Street. Both my wife and I have a certain affinity with the old church. Our parents were married there, we were both baptised there, we married there and our son was also baptised there.

My dad was brought up in Cotmanhay and attended the Methodist Chapel of 1853 on Cotmanhay Road but that is one that has assumed a new use as residential premises. Another chapel at Cotmanhay on Norman Street dates from a little later and the gable end bears an inscription showing the date as 1882 (left). This is now known as Cotmanhay Baptist Church and still continues as a place of worship.

Norman Street leads through to Charlotte Street and meets it just below the premises that house the Elim Christian Centre. Beginning as a house group in the 1960s the church occupied several sites both independently and jointly with other Christian organisations before settling in this former clothing factory in 1993 which was renovated to provide excellent facilities within a year of its purchase.

At the top of Charlotte Street on the corner of Heanor Road is a church in a more traditional style building. The brick built church was erected in 1936 although the origins of the church date back to 1850 when the congregation met in their previous building on Awsworth Road.

Another traditional style church but this time built of stone stands at the junction of Cotmanhay Road and Awsworth Road. Replacing an earlier mission church of the 1850s it was consecrated in 1884 by Bishop Maclagan who later became the Archbishop of York. It was built in the Early English style and four years later it assumed the role of the parish church of the newly formed Holy Trinity parish.

A much more recent construction but just around the corner from Holy Trinity is the Arena. The church was founded in 1994 and in similar fashion to the Elim Christian Centre mentioned earlier, it met for ten years in a former single-storey factory unit on this site. That building was extended creating a multi-purpose conference centre and was completed in 2004 Today it also includes a coffee shop and a number of meeting rooms as well as the three hundred seater main hall that allows many community activities and special events to be held in addition to the normal church meetings.

Moving closer to the town centre and back in time we find the Ilkeston Salvation Army Citadel in Chapel Street just off Bath Street. Despite much of the surrounding area being flattened for the construction of Chalons Way and the associated road alterations the building of 1879 has been modernised and still stands in its original position serving the community at large.

Almost within touching distance of the Citadel, the Primitive Methodists had built a chapel on Bath Street almost thirty years earlier in 1852. Like the Citadel it underwent many alterations including the 1888 addition of school rooms and a hall on Wilmot Street. Its lifespan extended until 1973 when the chapel was demolished but amalgamating with the Wesleyan Chapel members from further up Bath Street, their building also being demolished about the same time, enabled the combined Methodist Church of St Andrew's to be established surrounding the existing buildings on the Wilmot Street/Bath Street corner in the process.

The final place of worship in this first selection of images is based in St Mary's Street at Malin House which is the home of the Christian Community in Ilkeston, an organisation that was first established in 1922 under the leadership of Friedrich Rittelmeyer and is a "movement for religious renewal". The movement is worldwide but the local programme of events in Ilkeston shows that services are held at approximately monthly intervals. Click here for the second set of images for the southern half of the town .

Site Navigation Home "Pick A Picture" Weekly Favourites Latest Images Holidays & Days Out Special Features The Guest Page Archives Site search Web search powered by FreeFind Jigsaw Puzzles Recommended Links Terms & Conditions of Use This website is copyright but licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence. Please credit the photographer Garth Newton, or add a link to these pages.