All Saints R.C. Church

General information

The existence of these two parishes, located on an arm of the diocese and close to Manchester, points back to the mid-nineteenth century, when the Catholics were finally emancipated from centuries of legal restriction and financial terror. This was assisted in part by a growing population of immigrant Catholics from Ireland, who arrived especially later in the nineteenth century (fleeing the famines in their country) to serve the local cotton mills that brought so much prosperity to this small mountain town.

An important portion of the town's Catholic history is tied up with the Howard family, the Dukes of Norfolk, who owned significant areas of land in the valley and with other wealthy milling families, like the Sumners, and the various founding priests, built up Catholic Glossop with all its supporting structures: the churches, convents and schools.