About St Chad's
Rochdale Parish Church
There has been a church on the hill overlooking Rochdale town centre for more than 1,000 years. The building has been re-shaped, re-built and restored down the centuries, with later builders keeping faithful to the 1400s Perpendicular style.
Things of particular interest:
- spectacular stained-glass, like the Burne-Jones 'Faith, Hope and Charity' west window
- medieval stonework
- the historic font (buried to hide it from Cromwell's men in the mid-1600s, and rediscovered by a man digging a hole to plant a tree in 1893)
- outside, the ancient town stocks
Rochdale's historic town church still serves the Rochdale of today.