A surviving example of the district’s older places of worship, Slack Lane Baptist Chapel, near Oakworth, dates from 1819.
In its early years it was colloquially known as Shaw’s Chapel after Joseph Shaw, Keighley’s first Baptist pastor, who was instrumental in it’s building. He never turned down a contribution, however small, declaring that even one penny “would buy a pennyworth of nails”.
Slack Lane Baptists used to delight in a joke about a stranger passing the chapel and asking a boy what it was called.
When told “Slack Chapel”, he replied, “no, never, my lad. Folks cannot be very slack who come to a place so isolated.”
This photograph shows Slack Lane Chapel in the early years of the 20th century when it was in use as a Sunday School after the opening in 1880 of a large chapel nearby.
Prior to the provision of a manse, part of the building was still lived in and known as ‘Zion’s Cottage’.
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