Come and join us for a special time of praise and worship music.

An end of summer event to celebrate the 125th Anniversary of the Parish with food from all nations, music, fairy lights, and fun for all the family. The event is open to the whole community. Come along, join in the fun, and bring your family and friends. Bring your own drinks.

In September a new series of online Alpha courses will begin. If you would like to join this fantastic journey, please email alphalancs@gmail.com to register your interest, and please invite many others.

Do you have questions about life, about why we exist, how we make sense of suffering, where God is in all of this, and who is God anyway? The Alpha course provides a setting where life's questions can be explored, beginning by watching a short video together and some time for discussion. 

Some of the most unlikely people join us for Alpha. You don’t need to have any faith background, just an openness to explore, to listen and to discover. Whoever you are, you will receive a warm welcome at St Joseph’s.

Some of our past participants shared some of their reflections: ‘I am eternally grateful for Alpha’, ‘Totally outside my comfort zone, but the level of friendship that I discovered is something totally new to me’, ‘The videos were amazing and to hear how peoples lives have been transformed made me open my eyes’. Come and join us…

Please could you let us know if you can come or if you are interested by emailing, alphalancs@gmail.com 

Heritage Open Day. The church will be open on Saturday 11 September for a special event from 2 to 3.30 with the opportunity for guided tours, for refreshments and home made cakes, and a visit to our gardens.

Please email us beforehand to let us know you are coming.

Recognising the toll that this past year has taken on us all, we will be running a series of simple healing services with candlelit prayer, beautiful music and silence in the church. This is appropriate for everyone, regardless of whether they are Catholic or not, so please invite your friends, neighbours and colleagues.

Are you struggling with your health, or do you know anyone who is? Come and pray for them. Jesus has immense compassion on those who were suffering from blindness, deafness, paralysis, leprosy, and all kinds of sicknesses and ailments - and power came out of Him to heal them all. Why not you too?

Please join us in the Church to pray for peace in our world on the feast of Our Lady Mother of God on 1 January at 9.30am.

In this centenary year of the apparitions of Our Lady in Fatima to three peasant children in 1917, some parishioners have asked to pray the ‘First Saturday Devotion’ which was recommended to us by Our Lady at Fatima and who promised us that those who pray this Devotion, I will “assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation.” Sounds helpful? Read on…

Appearing with the Queen of Heaven in one apparition was the Infant Jesus, who said to Lucia, one of the visionaries: “Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother. It is covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation.” Our Lady then spoke: “See my Heart encircled by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Do you, at least, strive to console me? Tell them that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, in order to make reparation to me, on the First Saturday of five successive months, go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for a quarter of an hour of prayer and meditation.”

Beginning the first Saturday of August, next Saturday, at 9.45am, you are invited to pray the Rosary, celebrate Mass, and Confessions will be available afterwards with a time of Adoration and prayer. We will pray this Devotion each first Saturday till December.

Join us to pray the Divine Mercy chaplet every Friday at 9.40am, the hour in which Christ was nailed to the Cross for the salvation of the world. Let us enter into this prayer, given to us by St Faustina, and pray for an outpouring of God’s mercy upon our families, our parish and our world.

An exploration of the biblical roots of the Mass to deepen our understanding of what happens, and how the Mass transforms our lives and the whole of history. Five sessions delivered online beginning on Thursday 22 July at 7pm. Everyone is welcome. Registration for Zoom link at, please email alphalancs@gmail.com

St Joseph’s are hosting an afternoon of praise & worship music, bringing together musicians and fellow Christians from all the surrounding area, on Saturday 17 July at 2pm.

The Gift - a Life in the Spirit course - beginning on Thursday 6th May 2021, 7pm to 8.30 pm via Zoom.

This is an inspiring and practical 7-week series aimed at people of all ages to help them encounter the Holy Spirit and empower them to share their faith.

The session themes include ' The Father's loving plan, The Joy of the Gospel, The Cross, The Gift of the Spirit, Unwrapping God's Gift, Encountering God's Spirit and Living in The Spirit.

The teachings are relaxed, personal and informative, rooted in the Bible, the Catechism, Evangelii Gaudium and reflections on The Holy Spirit from Pope Francis.

If you are interested, please email alphalancs@gmail.com and the zoom link will be sent to you.

Usually at this time of the Year we celebrate the Appleby Fair, but this year it has been postponed because of Covid. But in this Year dedicated to St Joseph, we wanted to celebrate a special Mass for the Travelling community and anyone else who would like to come. St Joseph spent much of his life with the holy family, travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem, from Bethlehem to Egypt, from Egypt to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Jerusalem on many occasions, and he also would have travelled for his work. His life reminds us that we are all just passing through this world, and that Heaven is our homeland. In this Mass we will pray for the Travelling community, for their protection, and for Heaven’s blessing upon them.

A youth group for those who are in Secondary School, meeting each week online on Zoom. The leaders are Rachel Cortes and Laura Wrennal.

From Good Friday to the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, you are invited to pray the Divine Mercy Novena. On Divine Mercy Sunday, 11 April, there will be Confessions and Adoration from 2pm and special devotions at 3pm: veneration of the holy image, the chaplet, and Benediction. Our Lord said to St Faustina, ‘On this day the very depths of my tender mercy are open’.

In the manic preparations for Christmas, our online Advent Meditation by Candlelight will provide a quiet interlude, enabling you to gather thoughts and find peace, and to prepare for the coming of Our Saviour. Solo artists, music and readings, all with candlelight will make this a beautiful evening of preparation.

Parish Quiz on Friday 11 December at 7.30pm. Please find the link through Facebook in the Events. You can join us as a single person on Zoom, or make up a team with your isolated family unit. If you’re home alone, or not too confident with Zoom, why not use your phone to ‘phone a friend’ who is familiar and work out a way to team up using the telephone or Facetime.

Have you attended an Alpha Course? Are you thirsting for more? Do you want to enkindle that sense of friendship, of discovery, of hope? Why not sign up to Faith Explorers? This is a new online initiative run by St Joseph’s, beginning on Thursday 1 October with a range of themes to explore, designed to encourage you to continue the journey. Please contact alphalancs@gmail.com

Our parish story and history has finally been published and we are formally launching it on 20 October. This project has been completed with the support of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. This dynamic book provides an immersive experience with expert contributions from Ruth Baker, a creative writer, James Crowley, an architectural historian, parishioner Frances Dawbarn, and original illustrations from Rebecca Sheeran and graphic design by Rob Hotchkiss. The result is impressive, opening up vistas into history, culture and the beauty of St Joseph’s and its story. At the online launch, we hope that our contributors will be able to present their parts of the story and answer questions from historians, Dr Sam Riches of the Regional Heritage Centre at the University of Lancaster and Mr David Howarth, Head of History at Our Lady’s Catholic College, who have both been involved in a project to bring young people into contact with local history. Please email the parish for a link to the Zoom launch.

Over the past months, all of us have been challenged in so many ways, and the new circumstances have called forth a deepening of roots into the life of Christ. Drawing from that life, Christians are called to bear fruit in the world: in our homes, in our families, in our places of work, in the world around us. This retreat seeks to give you a moment to spend some time in prayer and reflection and ask the question, how can I become a missionary disciple?

The online retreat will be live streamed on St. Joseph’s main Facebook page at 2pm and on St. Joseph’s Liturgy of the Word / Children’s Corner / Music Ministry Facebook pages between 2.30pm – 4pm. Everybody welcome!

•2pm – 2.25 pm Introduction, testimony, Prayer and Praise & Worship on the Parish Facebook

•2.30pm – 4pm Liturgy of the Word, Messy Church, Praise & Worship online on different parish Group Facebook pages

•4pm – 6pm Reflection time in your own homes

•6pm Adoration in church and 6.30pm Mass in church and online.

Whilst the church oozes history, it’s garden quietly frames it. The formal front garden is quietly being restored holding the tomb stone of our patroness Miss Coulston. In the rear garden, not only do you get great views of the church sanctuary from the outside, there you will also see a lovingly planted ‘new’ parish community allotment. The space was birthed during our Covid lock-down from donations from the parish. A former wasteland gave way to vegetables and fruit from our rich blessed earth!The produce is sold in the parish to fund stock/plants for the following year. Any excess stock too goes to our food club. This space already lends itself to socially distanced meetings, Praise & Worship Gigs and the odd covid- time wedding!  And once Covid is through, we plan to run ‘prayer and gardening’ retreats and are already building up a team of volunteers to help with the day-to-day tasks.

Come along, enjoy the space, and some allotment produce (including fresh jams) will be available to take away for a small donation! Meet in the church for a short talk at 2pm and then the tour of the garden at the back.

An engaging eight-session online introduction to the Bible, led by Jeff Cavins, beginning at 6.30pm on Thursday 28 May, exploring the Bible and how it relates to your life, how the Old and New Testaments connect with one another, and how the sacraments, the Church, and our entire Catholic faith are rooted in the Scriptures. The course will be run on Zoom. Please email St Joseph’s if you would like to participate in this course so that we can send you the Zoom link.