Cross Lanes Mission Church
A short history
Located on Kiln Lane about 150 meters from the traffic lights.
Built-in 1834 as a Wesleyan chapel, under the stewardship of William Owen, seating 90 people.
In the latter half of the 1800s attendance started to fall and by 1900 it was decided to close the chapel and amalgamate the congregation with a Chapel at Bowling Bank.
After a while, there was a suggestion that it be sold, until Church of England residents in Sesswick put forward a plan for it to serve as a daughter church of Bangor Parish Church. This came into fruition when Major-General Sir Savage Lloyd-Mostyn and his wife Emily, daughter of the Rev. George Earle Welby, canon of Lincoln, came to live at Maes y Nant on Kiln Lane. Canon Welby supplied the funds to buy the Chapel as a Mission Room in 1916, together with the sum of £200 invested in 4.5% war loan, forming the nucleus of an endowment.
In 1917 donations of gifts to equip the Cross Lanes Mission Room as it was called, were provided by a number of the landed gentry, Lloyd- Mostyn and Mackenzie families, also various items from Mr. Griffith Jones, Miss Fenwick, Mr. Frank Lloyd, Mrs. Pitcairn Campbell and Mrs. Gossage of Gerwyn Hall.
The mission stood on the ground surrounded by the land of a farmhouse owned by the Bayliss Family. Mrs. Bayliss undertook the cleaning of the building.
At this time it was supported by a healthy congregation at Sunday services and Sunday School, with Christmas parties and summer events for the children at what became the Cross Lanes Hotel in later years.
Since World War 11 the congregation dwindled and in 1984 it was closed for worship with a thanksgiving service on October 5th.
Various items were transferred to the neighbouring churches of Eyton and Bangor on Dee and Bangor Presbyterian Church. Pews were sold and other furniture such as the reredos was added to the Lady Chapel in St Deiniol Bangor on Dee and became known as the Cross Lanes Chapel in 1989.
After remaining empty for some years the building was sold to the Bayliss Brothers, whose land surrounds it.
The building still exists to this day, having been broken into in the past and the beautiful parquet floor stolen. It remains a sorry sight and a reminder of times gone by.
Photos by Raymond Jones and Heather Rowland
The Church today.
