St. Joseph’s Catholic Church stands on the eastern side of Preston, and is surrounded by a rapidly-developing population.  The district has a South Staffordshire look—­is full of children, little groceries, public-houses and beershops, brick kilns, smoke, smudge, clanging hammers, puddle-holes, dogs, cats, vagrant street hens, unmade roads, and general bewilderment.  When the new gasometer, which looks like the skeleton of some vast colosseum, is finished here, an additional balminess will be given to the immediate atmosphere, which may be very good for children in the hooping-cough, but anything except pleasant for those who have passed through that lively ordeal.  In 1860, a Catholic school was erected in Rigby-street, Ribbleton-lane.  Directly afterwards divine service was held in the building, which in its religious character was devoted to St. Joseph.  But either the walls of the edifice were too weak, or the roof of it too strong, for symptoms of “giving way” soon set in, and the place had to be pulled down.  In 1866, having been rebuilt and enlarged, it was re-opened.  In the meantime, religious services and scholastic training being essential, and it being considered too far to go to St. Ignatius’s and St. Augustine’s, which were the places patronised prior to the opening of St. Joseph’s mission, another school, with accomodation in it for divine worship, was erected on a plot of land immediately adjoining.  Nearly one half of the money required for this building, which was opened in 1864, was given by Protestants.  At the northern end of it, there is a closed-off gallery, used as a school for boys.  The remainder of the building is used for chapel purposes.  The exterior of the edifice is neat and substantial; the interior—­that part used for worship—­is clean, spacious, and light.  At the southern end there is a small but pretty altar, and around the building are hung what in Catholic phraseology are termed “the stations.”  There is not much ornament, and only a small amount of paint, in the place.

The chapel will hold 560 persons; it is well attended; and the congregations would be larger if there were more accomodation.  Masses are said here, and services held, on the plan pursued at other chapels of the same denomination.  The half-past nine o’clock mass on a Sunday morning is a treat; for at it you can see a greater gathering of juvenile bazouks than at any other place in the town.  Some of the roughest-headed lads in all creation are amongst them; their hair seems to have been allowed to have its own way from infancy, and it refuses to be dictated to now.  The congregation is a very poor one, and this will be at once apparent when we state that the general income of the place, the entire proceeds of it, do not exceed 100 pounds a year.  Nearly every one attending the chapel is a factory worker, and the present depressed state of the cotton trade has consequently a special and a very crushing bearing upon the mission.