Machpelah

John Fawcett ran a school at Brearley Hall and Ewood Hall, where he also lived, before purchasing land near the canal, naming it Machpelah and arranging for four houses to be built. He moved into his house 1805, leaving running the school to his son. It is likely that John Fawcett lived at No 16, where he spent his retirement years. The biography written by his son states: “The proximity of his habitation to the public road afforded his friends, who were travelling, an opportunity of calling upon him; and he was here in the centre of his church and congregation, who were now enabled to benefit, not only by his preaching, but by frequent opportunities of social intercourse, which his prior engagements, and the distance of the situation, had often precluded.”  Fawcett named the house after the cave mentioned in Genesis chapter 23, which Abraham bought as a burial ground. He had a vault built at the rear as a private burial place for his wife, who died in 1810. It was at the request of Rev Fawcett that, when he died, her body was to be reburied at Wainsgate.

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