In my first post on Croft Chapel I mentioned Ellen Yates whose determination to open a new chapel after Risley Chapel was taken from the congregation eventually resulted in the opening of Croft Unitarian Chapel in September 1839.

From G.E.Evans’s Vestiges of Protestant Dissent

One of the sources Ian Sellers used in his 1978 article was What One Woman Did: The Origin and Early History of Croft Unitarian Chapel. This was published in 1938 and consisted of a short article by Rev George Eyre Evans, originally published in the Inquirer on 21^st July 1938, together with a few short paragraphs added by the Rev A. Cobden Smith who had been minister of Leigh.

Thanks to the kindness of Rev Andrew and Margaret Hill I have been sent a scan of this short work which highlights the work done by Ellen Yates née Urmston. She was born in Warrington in 1778 and went into domestic service at the age of nine in the home of the Rev John Aspinal, minister at Risley from 1779 and former minister at Walmsley. She remained in his service until her marriage to “farmer Yates” with whom she had ten children, six of whom outlived her.

According to G.E. Evans “Farmer Yates and Ellen his wife opened their house for divine worship on Sundays, and for nigh twelve months” the Rev E.R. Dimmock of Warrington conducted worship along with supply preachers.

This account includes a quotation from something written by the Rev Henry Fogg, sometime minister of Ormskirk and a supply preacher at Croft. (Strangely enough I have a picture of the Rev Henry Fogg but I have never seen an image of the now long vanished chapel at Ormskirk.) He gives a vivid picture of the services in her farmhouse when “in the singing of the last hymn she put the kettle on to boil for tea. We made a collection in one of her best saucers.”

As was mentioned previously she managed to collect the not insignificant sum of £500 towards the new chapel by walking to churches all over the north west on fund raising expeditions. Frequently she didn’t get home until very late at night and “On one occasion, after spending a busy and successful Saturday in Manchester, she missed her last conveyance home, but rather than not be in her accustomed place in the Sunday meeting in her own house, she resolutely determined to walk the whole distance – about eighteen miles – and reached home about two o’clock in the morning.”

Ellen Yates died in September 1850 and was buried in the chapel grave yard. Her grave and that of her husband is quite prominent. A. Cobden Smith also mentions that there was a marble tablet to her memory in the Chapel, presumably this is now long gone, but her grave can still be seen:

The grave of Ellen and Samuel Yates (Photo: Jack Steers)