Frome Baptists, Sheppard's Barton

Frome Baptists, Sheppard’s Barton. Account below taken from Ernest G. Fortune, Sheppard’s Barton Baptist Church, Frome  (n. p., n. d.). [typescript Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford].

Much of the church records were copied out and preserved by John Sheppard. The church began around 1705 (Coombs says it was around 1660, but not organized as a church until 1705). The Baptist meeting in Badcox Lane predated the meeting in Sheppard’s Barton, as well the Independent meeting in Rook Lane and later Bath Street. An early pastor at Sheppard’s Barton was William Hendy, who built the first church in 1708. Hendy died in 1741, aged 71. He was succeeded by Edward Henwood, assistant since 1733. In 1745 John Sedgefield was appointed his assistant, and in 1752 they became co-pastors, shortly before the death of Henwood. Sedgefield succeeded to the pastorate, and remained there until he was succeeded by Job David of Bristol Academy in 1775. David remained until November 1803, having long before adopted Unitarian positions (1). David kept his Unitarian views mostly to himself for many years, but as he became more public in them, many left the church and began to worship in Badcox Lane, resulting in David’s resignation. A Sunday School was organized in 1784 by a Mr Wilson, according to Jane Bunn in 1845.  Miss Bunn was a correspondent of John Foster (her mother was his landlady, I believe) and she died in 1862, aged 94.  The writer says that Arianism had thinned the congregations at Sheppard’s Barton and Rook Lane in the latter quarter of the 18th century.  But the stirrings of evangelicalism were afoot in Frome. John Foster succeeded David, coming from Downend, near Bristol, with many Arians still in the congregation. Foster only preached for a short time, having to retire from the pulpit in 1806, after which he commenced his career with the Eclectic Review (2). He was succeeded by William Murch, who remained until 1827. Under Murch the church became more active in the Western Association, and the smaller Wiltshire and East Somerset Association, but it was always too moderately Calvinistic to suit well with the larger Association, even less than Badcox Lane. The new Baptist Association (the Wiltshire-Hampshire one) formed in 1824 met initially at Sheppard’s Barton that June (3). Murch left in 1827 to become President at Stepney College, London, and was later secretary of the Baptist Union and twice President. In 1828, Edward Cooper Daniel, student at Bristol, came as pastor at Sheppard’s Barton, ordained on 28 August and died on 28 December!  He was succeeded by William Jones, student at Stepney and Edinburgh, who remained until 1847, leaving to succeed Murch as President of Stepney.