Littledale Free Church

Littledale Free Church sits in the valley of Littledale near the village of Caton and is now abandoned and used as farm storage.

Reverend John Dodson

It was built in 1849 for Reverend John Dodson, who came from a family of shipping magnates in Liverpool, and was built at the same time as nearby Littledale Hall, which is now a residential rehabilitation centre for treating various addictions.

Reverend Dodson had been vicar of Cockerham, near Lancaster, from 1835 to 1849, but after he seceded, or officially withdrew his membership, from the Anglican Church in protest at an incident known as the ‘Gorham judgement’, he retired with his family to Littledale.

He preached in the church for 30 years and died in Eastbourne in Sussex in 1890.

The Gorham judgement

The Gorham judgement over which Reverend Dobson seceded his position as the vicar of Cockerham, is an interesting moment in our history and a cause of great controversy and turmoil for the Church of England. George Cornelius Gorham, after which the controversial incident is named, was a vicar in the Church of England, and applied for the position of vicar of St. Peter’s Church in Bramford Speke in Devon,

He was denied the position however as the bishop reviewing the application, Bishop Henry Philpotts, took exception to Gorham’s views on baptism, which were that baptism at birth did not alone make one a Christian and that it depended upon keeping promises made later in life.

The bishop denied Gorham the post but he appealed to a higher court, the ecclesiastical Court of Arches, to persuade the bishop to institute him but the court sided with the bishop’s decision and awarded costs against Gorham instead. Many members of the church were disappointed and angry about this decision and this caused some, like reverend Dodson, to leave the Church of England and set up their own, free, churches.

Construction

The free church that Reverend Dodson had built in Littledale is constructed of Sandstone with a slate roof and is very simply laid out with just a nave and buttressed walls and no other divisions or rooms, except the front porch which is now barricaded with an iron grill. Above the porch is a plaque which reads ‘A Free Church, 1849′. The building is in fairly good condition except that one of the windows is missing its stone mullion post.

The graveyard of the church only has one gravestone, for which two burials are recorded, one is the vicar, John Dodson, and the other is for his eldest son, John, who died in 1851 at the age of 18. The church is well worth visiting to pay your respects to this man who doggedly persevered against the powers that be at the time, and to explore a beautiful and very seldom visited corner of the Forest of Bowland that i’ve found has a very quiet and contemplative air about it.

A B-H