'Lowry' chapel to become mosque

On a brilliant spring afternoon it is easy to see why, 50 years ago, L S Lowry's eye was taken by the cluster of sandstone buildings which stand on Lowergate in the rural Lancashire town of Clitheroe.

The belching chimneys he found here are gone and the red fire station he painted is now a whitewashed chippy, but the grandeur of the buildings is undimmed - especially that of the redundant clothes factory marked out by a rooftop cross as a former Methodist chapel in terrain which John Wesley knew well. And therein lie the roots of a raging controversy, which could hardly be further removed from the gentle scene of endeavour Lowry depicted in his A Street in Clitheroe.

After a long struggle to find a suitable place of worship in the town, the small Muslim population of Clitheroe has, by the narrowest of council votes, secured planning permission to convert the Mount Zion Methodist chapel into its first mosque. Read more