Brook Street Chapel is a Grade I listed building. The description given by Historic England reads as follows;
"KNUTSFORD
SJ7478 ADAM'S HILL 792-1/3/1 (South East side) 18/01/49 Brook Street Unitarian Chapel (Formerly Listed as: ADAM'S HILL Unitarian Chapel)
GV I
Unitarian chapel. 1689. Brick with stone-flagged roof. PLAN: single-celled structure, the galleried interior expressed externally as 2 storeys. EXTERIOR: 6 window range. Outer entrances in shallow segmental arches beneath external staircases each side, giving access to upper doorways leading to gallery. 2-light mullioned windows throughout, with 4 to ground floor, the chamfered mullions and surrounds rendered over, and with flat brick hoodmoulds. Additional 2 single-light windows centrally, between the storeys. INTERIOR: entered from a lobby to SW, screened off from the main chapel in the early C18. The main body of the chapel has gallery running round 3 sides, with pulpit in centre of long wall, between the additional windows presumably placed to light it. Short communion rail in front of pulpit, and font opposite. Pulpit possibly late C17 or early C18, polygonal with heavy panelling, curved stair, and splayed base. Gallery has splat balusters and panelled pews, and is supported on chamfered timber posts. Pews in lower storey date from 1859. HISTORY: the chapel is associated with the writer Elizabeth Gaskell, who attended as a child, and who is buried in the churchyard."
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"The chapel was built in 1689 soon after the passing of the Act of Toleration. The land was given by Isaac Antrobus, a Knutsford tanner and life long dissenter, as a gift to build the chapel and a small burial ground. Money for the building and fitments were given by other members.
William Tong helped Isaac Antrobus organise the building of the New Chapel. It was built of red brick with a stone-flagged roof in two storeys with two external staircases. Inside there is a gallery on three sides and a pulpit on a long wall. The pulpit dates from the late 17th or early 18th century and the pews from 1859.
The Chapel was built so that it was inconspicuous and resembled a private house or farm building. This was because the dissenters had a very real fear that the right to public worship and freedom from prosecution could be withdrawn. It is said that lookouts were posted by the outside steps to the galleries in case of attack.
It is the burial place of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell who died in 1865, her husband William Gaskell who died in 1884, and their two unmarried daughters who died in 1908 and 1913.
The gardens which lie behind the chapel are tranquil and well kept. A cutting taken from a Mulberry Tree in Shakespeare’s garden, has been planted in the chapel garden in recognition of the two years Elizabeth spent at boarding school in Stratford-upon Avon.
The building is still in use as a Unitarian chapel."
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