Places of Worship GAZ Cockermouth

Cockermouth remained a chapelry of Brigham parish until 1865, its medieval chapel standing on the site of the present All Saints Church (as confirmed by the names Kirkgate, Kirkwent, Kirkcroft recorded in the late medieval period). It was rebuilt in the reign of Edward III. By 1385 the dedication to St Mary had changed to the present All Saints. Only the tower of the 14th century building was incorporated into the new building of 1711. The present church was consecrated in 1854 following rebuilding after the previous church was burnt down in 1850.  Other medieval religious sites included the chapel of St Helen, at the head of St Helen’s Street, recorded in 1270 and surviving into the late 15th century, and St Leonard’s chapel at the west end of the town, also recorded in 1270.

In 1865 a second Anglican church, Christchurch, was opened to serve a new parish covering Cockermouth west of the River Cocker and the Gote area, carved out of the parishes of Brigham  and Bridekirk.

Cockermouth Independent (Congregationalist) church (now the United Reformed Church) was established in 1651, meeting first in members’ houses, then, from 1687, in a converted house on The Sands. A chapel was built in 1719 and rebuilt in 1735, the present church, adjacent to the older chapel, dating from 1850. This became the United Reformed Church following the union of Congregational and Presbyterian churches in 1972. A Presbyterian Meeting House is shown at the eastern edge of the town on Donald’s map of 1774. A Quaker meeting house was built at the head of Kirkgate in 1688; rebuilt in 1781 and again in 1884.

The first Methodist Chapel in the town was in High Sand Lane (now the Victoria Hall). Following the split into Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, the Wesleyans built a new chapel in 1841 (now the Town Hall); the Primitives moved in 1885 to the vacant National School in New Street. The previous Primitive Methodist chapel was used by the Salvation Army in 1901.  Lorton Street Methodist church was built in 1932 as the new Wesleyan Chapel, the year the different branches of Methodism reunited.

Prior to 1856 Roman Catholic services were held at the Sun Barn in the yard of the Sun Inn (now named ‘1761’) at the bottom of Kirkgate. St Joseph’s Church, Crown Street, has served from 1856 up to the present.

By 2012 an evangelical charismatic group, the King’s Church, had been established in the town, meeting in Cockermouth School.

The town cemetery, with two mortuary chapels, was laid out in 1856.