Saving a piece of history
A £500,000 appeal has been launched to save a Victorian church at the centre of Rochdale. St Edmund’s Church has strong masonic associations and has been described as ‘Rochdale’s temple to Freemasonry’. The Grade I-listed building is now in the hands of the Churches Conservation Trust, which hopes to finish the first phase of urgent repairs this spring at a cost of around £215,000. A second phase for internal repairs will include the organ and cost around £300,000. The church was built in the 1870s and given to the people of Rochdale by Albert Hudson Royds, a former DPGM of East Lancashire.
