St Michael and St John Church, Clitheroe
grade II listed catholic church in Clitheroe, Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England, UK
St Michael and St John the Evangelist Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England. It is situated on Lowergate road close to the centre of the town. It was endowed in 1799 by the Catholic philanthropist Thomas Weld (of Lulworth) and staffed by members of the Society of Jesus. When the original building became St Michael and St John's Catholic Primary School in 1850, the church moved next-door to the school. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
History
Foundation
Fr John Laurenson SJ first came to Clitheroe in 1794. There he started a mission to the local Catholics in the area. He resided in the nearby Stonyhurst College which was the great gift of Thomas Weld of his family seat to the recently returned English Jesuits from 200 years of European exile, and it was from there they did most of their work in the area. In 1798, Thomas Weld presented them with land on Lowergate so that they could build a church and a school. In 1799, a small chapel was built on the site.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “St Michael and St John Church, Clitheroe” is grade II listed catholic church in Clitheroe, Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Michael, John and Church, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “grade II listed catholic church in Clitheroe, Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15979445. Authority coordinates are 53.871, -2.391. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1799, 1850, 1794 and 1798.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “St Michael and St John Church, Clitheroe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.