Heritage Open Days: St John’s Church in Dewsbury celebrates 200th anniversary with rededication service and special walk

The special service at the historic church, on Boothroyd Lane, will be officiated by the Archdeacon of Halifax, Bill Braviner, on Sunday, September 10.

Members from St Paul’s Church in Hanging Heaton - whose foundation stone was also laid 200 years ago in 1823 - will also be in attendance.

The milestone celebrations tie in with the annual national Heritage Open Days festival, which runs from Friday, September 8 until Sunday, September 17.

The church will be open on Saturday, September 9 and Saturday, September 16, from 11am to 3pm. On these days a heritage walk, organised by Friends of Crowness Park in association with Kirklees, will take place through the Dewsbury park before finishing at St John’s.

The church will also have a host of displays, photographs and archive documents on show, while, in addition, people will have the chance to have a tour of the churchyard and pay tribute to the town’s fallen war heroes.

A special booklet has also been compiled of The History of Gifts which has produced some very interesting stories of the church’s links with Germany, including a big processional cross which was gifted to the setting in the early 1900s.

Refreshments will be available in the church’s friendship cafe.

St John’s finance officer, Malcolm Brooke, 80, said: “We have a lot of old photographs, baptism certificates and displays. People can also have a look around the cemetery area at the special war graves, which we are identifying with a poppy wreath.”