Brentwood Baptist Church
People finding God

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRENTWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH

The founding of the present Baptist Church in Brentwood was part of the great wave of Baptist church planting in London and the Home Counties in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, set in motion by the great Baptist preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  Spurgeon became minister of New Park Street Chapel in Southwark at the age of nineteen. His church had soon to be rebuilt to accommodate all who wished to hear him  but was inadequate for the purpose within a short space of time.  His strategy was therefore to found a college where young men could be trained as pastors.  These men were thereafter encouraged to set about the task of chuch planting in areas where conditions were favourable.  Spurgeon had often not only to give his students a theological education but often also to fill the gaps in their general education.  Nevertheless numbers of them became faithful and inspiring ministers and missionaries, looking to Spurgeon as a model, but by no means slavishly imitating him.

Brentwood in 1884 was in Spurgeon's eyes a strategic site for expansion. The railway had arrived in 1840 and thereafter there was a rapid expansion in residential building.  The area had  hitherto been  largely rural with a number of small industries like malting and brickmaking.  There were also a number of large institutional buildings in the area.

The County Lunatic Asylum was opened in 1855.  The Warley Barracks had been built in 1805 but passed to the Crown after the Indian Mutiny in 1857.  The Agricultural and Industrial School (later St Faiths) was founded by the London Borough of Shoreditch in 1854.  In 1874 the Brentwood Industrial School at the bottom of Rose Valley housed a 100 delinquent boys from South London.  The staff and inmates of these institutions actually at times outnumbered the rest of the local population.  Links with a number of them are apparent in church records.

By 1884 the central Anglican church had been much influenced by the Tractarian Movement.  The Roman Catholic church was strong and expanding.  The influential Congregational church was  by Spurgeon's standards  veering in the direction of theological liberalism.   At this date there was little appreciation of the value of the variety of the different traditions within the Christian Church.  In particular the evangelical tradition, within which Spurgeon was strongly entrenched,  tended to see itself as the sole repository of the whole Christian truth.   Spurgeon felt therefore that there was a place in Brentwood for what he would have seen as a soundly evangelical foundation.

In 1884 one of Spurgeon's students, William Walker, was sent to the area to see what he could do.  Walker was only 22 at the time and had previously been apprenticed as an engineer.  He doggedly held meetings in the Town Hall and despite some discouragements, he gathered the nucleus of a congregation.  Spurgeon gave him some token help but had too many schemes afoot to do very much.  By 1885 Walker had purchased land in what is now Kings Road (opposite Fairfield Road) and erected a Tin Tabernacle.  A few of these still remain (notably a good example at Mountnessing)  and they were an excellent solution to the urgent need for a meeting place using the latest industrial technology.  The cost was nearly £500.  In October 1885 the first services were held.  The occupations of the original trustees are interesting.  They included a bricklayer and a fishmonger. The appeal had been to a fairly humble social stratum but that made the achievement all the more remarkable.  It is apparent  that the ethos of the new chapel was defiantly protestant and theologically conservative.   Walker was not a man to choose his words carefully and his utterances sound bellicose in our more ecumenical age.  However he was duly ordained and appointed pastor of the chapel.  He remained at Brentwood until 1896 by which time membership stood at 65. He left for Barrow in Furness where he remained until his retirement.  In 1985 there were still church members there who remembered him with great affection.

In 1892 Dr Richard Francis Weymouth, former headmaster of Mill Hilll School, retired and moved to Brentwood.  In his retirement he produced the first translation of the New Testament into modern English.  He became a deacon of Brentwood Baptist Church and seems to have been a somewhat intimidating presence to subsequent ministers although never to the robust Walker.   The church passed through difficult times until the arrival in 1912 of an exceptionally gifted lay pastor, Henry Prothero Ford, a wholesale rep.  He said he sold tea to enable him to preach the gospel. For 20 years he laboured as pastor without financial reward.  The church prospered under this much loved pastor and his loyal and supportive family.   The present church building, designed by Weymouth's architect son, was erected and completed in 1915.  A church hall was built in 1921. Ford remained until 1932 leaving a strong church.

Another outstanding ministry commenced in 1968 when Arnold Sewell and his deaconess wife Gladys took on the joint pastorate.  Arnold and Gladys had been BMS missionaries in the then Belgian Congo.  They remained at Brentwood for 17 years and the influence of the church steadily increased.  The membership more than doubled and reached 158.   The character of the church changed.  Arnold was passionately eager to advance ecumenical relationships and although a staunch evangelical himself, he gladly worked with all the other churches.  Indeed he was a leading figure and in 1982 master minded a particularly successful town wide mission led by Eric Delve.  It was supported by the Roman Catholics and their bishop and  also by the Bretheren and Pentecostals, a rare combination at that date. A far cry indeed from the sectarian days of the late nineteenth century.

He was succeeded in 1986 by Mike Elcome, whose ministry was marked by the establishment of a successful church plant at Pilgrims Hatch.  He was also influential in establishing the Schools Christian Worker Trust.  This was a new venture placing salaried workers and volunteers in the schools of the town.   It has proved a valued and growing venture.

Our present minister Rev Peter Thomas arrived in 1999 to continue the emphasis on Biblical teaching, evangelism and prayer. For six years he has chaired Churches Together in Brentwood, encouraging cooperation between the churches of the town while maintaining a faithful evangelical witness, not least by pioneering the major involvement of the churches in the Borough Council’s annual Christmas event, “Lighting Up Brentwood”. Youth Worker Steve Tinning joined the staff team in 2002 and Outreach Worker Michele Gibbins in 2004.  Many new folk are being drawn in, especially as a result of a succession of Alpha courses but also because newcomers to the area have found a welcome and a home with us. Strong links with both Bulgaria and Uganda have also grown, with now three members of the church serving as missionaries with Africa Inland Mission in Uganda.

Our Church Historian and Archivist is Mrs Doreen Acton. Do contact us for details of Doreen’s book on the history of the church.

Send mail to peter@pbthomas.com with questions or comments about this web site.   Last modified: 10/09/08