In 1803 he was appointed to the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Union Street, Rochdale, east Lancashire.

Whilst in the north-east, his supporters in Rochdale published two of his sermons on justification by faith.

[2] After Cooke's death, Providence Chapel building in Rochdale was sold to a Congregationalist group.

In Rochdale, led by James Wilkinson, the Cookites, or 'Methodist Unitarians' as they soon became known, erected a new chapel in Clover Street in 1818.

[4] In 1890, the Clover Street Chapel congregation merged with the much older (seventeenth century) Unitarian meeting, Blackwater Street, and remains active today as part of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.