It takes imagination to picture the Knowle Green of two hundred years ago with the Knowle Green of today. Then the area was a small but important part of the Industrial Revolution. Hand loom weaving and agriculture were the main employment but there was also a cotton mills, iron turning and roller and bobbin makers all utilising the water of the Cowley Brook. Today the village is mainly a commuter area, has no hand loom weavers, no mills and agriculture plays a small part as farms have amalgamated endeavouring to make economies of scale.
It was into this diverse background in the early eighteen twenties that William Bond, an entrepreneur from Chipping, bought the Knowle Green Cotton Spinning Mill (Upper Mill) and the iron works (Lower Mill). Both mills had experienced financial difficulties over the years but William had an eye for business which had brought him great wealth. He was also, like many cotton manufacturers of his era, a committed non-conformist. As a Christian, records say that he was concerned about the morals of his workers: “drinking was the chief business of the people in their spare time, and fighting was their only recreation”.
William decided to do something about it. He advertised for a warper to come and work in his mill and also act as a missionary to the people. William Hayhurst, an “energetic member of the church assembling in Chapel Street Chapel, Blackburn under the pastoral care of Dr.Fletcher” applied for the position, and was accepted. ( Dr Joseph Fletcher had been the minister at Chapel Street since 1807 and later became the theological tutor of the Blackburn Independent Academy 1816 -1843, which later in 1843 became the Lancashire Independent College, based in Manchester.) In his acceptance letter to William Bond dated Blackburn, April 12, 1822, William Hayhurst writes: “The warps which you want warping which are 12 A day will not occupy all my time so that I shall have some time to prepare for the instructions of the Sabbath for you are aware that there must be some time devoted for this either by day or by night in order to appear with advantage and to be rendered acceptable and useful for the Man endued with the most splendid talents and the most gen(i)us cannot do without.” William Hayhurst was a young man of around twenty four years of age, married with a young daughter when he came to Knowle Green.
William Hayhurst must have been successful in his missionary work at Knowle Green for in Nightingale’s book, “Centenary of the Lancashire Congregational Union 1806-1906” Knowle Green is recorded as being in receipt of financial aid from the Union as early as 1827 suggesting that there was the beginnings of a church at that date but the actual church building was not opened until 1831. Most of the work had been done by the people themselves at a cost of £100 and in 1831 the church was officially opened by Rev. Luke Foster the minister of Chapel Street Chapel, Blackburn. The opening paragraph of one of the church record books states that, “On the 26th February 1831, a church was formed at Knowle Green consisting of twenty members. The ordinance of the Lord’s Supper was administered for the first time on the evening of the same day by the Rev. Luke Foster of Chapel Street Chapel, Blackburn”.
Up until the time of his death on 12th October 1858 approaching his sixtieth year, William Hayhurst preached the doctrine of “Congregationalism or Independency”. He was succeeded as minister by Rev. Giles Scott, born in Clitheroe in 1813 and associated with the Congregational churches in Clitheroe and Walker Fold Chapel, Chaigley where he had worked for four years prior to coming to Knowle Green “without fee or reward”.  He was ordained at Knowle Green, his only full-time ministry, on Whit Tuesday, 29th May, 1860.
By this time, 1858 - 1860, the present church building was proving to be too small for the needs of the people as it “would only accommodate about 220 people”. Printed forms appealing for subscriptions towards meeting the cost of the purchase of a derelict building down the road tell us that the original church was used for “teaching as well as public worship; and not only is the congregation put to serious inconvenience but, in order to make room for those who wish to attend the preaching of the gospel many of the scholars cannot be accommodated…..Providence has provided…. A new building has been erected about 100 yards from the present chapel”.  Rev. Scott tells us in the following passage: “A large new building has been begun in the neighbourhood, which was intended for a public house, but the man had evidently not fully counted the cost, for, having begun to build, he was not able to finish. Finding the speculation unprofitable, he was glad to get rid of the property, so he sold it to us with five hundred yards of land and two cottages, one of which has been turned into a parsonage house, for the small sum of three hundred pounds. This property belonged at one time to Stonyhurst College. We took out the inside of the building and converted it into a chapel capable of holding three hundred people, which is generally admitted to be the neatest, prettiest chapel for twenty miles around”. (The trust deed is in the name of His Eminence The Right Reverend Thomas Weld.)
The cost of the whole was around £600, £100 more than the estimate, monies having been donated by subscription over the previous six years, but on the day of the opening Thursday, 22nd November 1867 and after the offering following the opening services conducted in the morning by Rev. J.B.Lister of Blackburn and Rev. H.J.Martyn of Preston in the afternoon, the new building was declared free from debt and every “sitting was let”. (Up until around sixty years ago people paid a sum every quarter for the number of seats they occupied in every pew.) For those attending the opening service a train left Preston at 11.00am and was met by a horse drawn bus at Longridge for Knowle Green and a luncheon was provided in the school room at a cost of one shilling. The side galleries were added in 1871/2.
The 1860’s was a difficult time for the cotton industry: there was the American Civil War 1861-1864 which resulted in the Cotton Famine in turn presenting difficulties for hand loom weavers and for mill owners who were unable to obtain the raw materials needed for their work whilst the developing steam powered mills of previous decades had resulted in people from rural areas being forced to relocate for work to the developing towns and younger workers from Knowle Green moved not just to Ribchester and Longridge but also Nelson, Bury and further afield. In Knowle Green William Bond’s water powered Cotton Spinning Mill which in the 1820’s had employed 38 operatives at the time of its closure in 1864 was employing 19 operatives and hand loom weaving, the vital economic ‘add on’ to agriculture, had virtually ceased. Knowle Green was becoming impoverished with an increasing aged population.
Giles Scott was concerned. A number of his congregation had moved for work to Longridge but there was no Congregational church there for them to attend. Shortly after he came to Knowle Green he decided to organise prayer meeting in Longridge. These meeting grew and in 1865 Longridge Congregational Church was opened the people of Knowle Green donating £1000 to the project.