Churches

Christ Church, its design attributed to Thomas Stringer, was built in in the 1790s – in a style then fashionable – under a private Act of Parliament promoted by the owners of the Alsager estate to enable the parishioners to have a local place of worship more convenient than the parish church at Barthomley. It had no parish of its own, and the right to appoint clergy remained with the estate. Its anomalous status was fought over throughout the 19^th century, a story recounted in detail in Alsager, the Place and its People. The interior was altered on its centenary. Its churchyard remains the only place of burial in the town, for Anglicans, non-conformists and others alike, so many of the individuals named on this website are buried there

St Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church in Lawton Road grew out of a small chapel established privately at the Cedars in the 1930s and active before WW2. The church was built after the congregation had grown with the establishment of the ordnance factory at Radway Green and as finance and postwar building restrictions permitted. It opened in 1953.

St Mary Magdalene’s church was built from 1894 and was intended to resolve the anomalous position of Christ Church. It replaced an iron chapel that had served its congregation for a dozen years (this is now St Philip, Hassall Green, and painted pink). The land formed part of George Plant’s acquisitions in the late 1870s. St Mary’s was intended to have a spire; this has never materialised, and its most noted internal features are memorial windows to the two sons of Nellie and Adolphus Goss killed in WW1. The Sainsbury’s next door takes the place of its former schoolroom, built by Thomas Gratton.

The Wesleyan Chapel, Hassall Road was opened for worship on land bought from a supporter, John Plant, in 1834, meetings having hitherto taken place on private premises. The chapel was quickly found to be inadequate for the congregation’s needs, and it was enlarged in 1852 and again a century later. When the larger premises on Lawton Road came into being, its adherents were known as ‘Little Wesleyans’. It is now used as a second-hand bookshop, raising funds for the Englesea Brook museum of Primitive Methodism.

The Wesleyan Chapel, Lawton Road, designed by G. B. Ford, opened in 1869, followed the movement to Alsager during the 1860s of many involved in manufacturing in the Potteries. Its members came from most social groups, and have always played a prominent part in local matters, though in its early days they were much concerned with paying off the substantial sum it had taken to build. No. 70 Station Road, known as Donnington, became its manse around the beginning of the 20^th century.

The Congregational Chapel, built in Brookhouse Road by Samuel Davies, was opened in 1870. It originally served about 15 families, including the Maddocks, who were instrumental in purchasing the land; it is not clear whether the architect, E. Maddock of Hanley, was a relation. Hitherto the congregation met in the Primitive Methodist schoolroom. Eventually it became part of the United Reformed Church.

The Primitive Methodist Chapel was designed by Ralph Dain of Burslem and established in 1862 at the ‘west end’ of the village – near the junction with Station Road, on the south side next to shops.  The congregation provided a manse for its minister, behind, which is still there on Station Road; the chapel-keeper also had a house.  The chapel, notably its schoolroom, was used by the UDC before it established its own premises. It closed in 1969, and is now commemorated only by the manse and by Chapel Mews.