Sunday School Movement 

The Sunday School movement flourished in the 1780s and ’90s, among Anglican and nonconformist congregations alike, largely inspired by the work of the wealthy London Baptist layman, William Fox (1736-1826), and the evangelical Anglican, Robert Raikes (1735-1811). After hearing of Raikes’s efforts with educating children by means of Sunday Schools, Fox arranged a meeting with Raikes at the Poultry in London in August 1785, at which time they both agreed to circulate a letter recommending the formation of Sunday Schools throughout Great Britain.  This led to the founding of the Sunday School Society the following month, with a board comprised equally of Anglicans and representatives from the three nonconformist denominations. Thirty schools were established the first year, and over 147 by January 1787. By 1796, the Society had helped establish nearly 1100 Sunday Schools, educated 70,000 scholars, and distributed over 5700 Bibles, 26,000 Testaments, and 110,000 spelling books.  By 1805, those numbers would more than double. John Saffery founded a Sunday School at Brown Street in 1792, and in 1801, expanded the school to meet not only on Sundays but also on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  According to the church historian, the church rented the Joiners’ Hall in Salisbury for 1s. a week to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. The school closed in 1821. See Joseph Ivimey, Memoir of William Fox, Esq., Founder of the Sunday-School Society (London: Wightman, 1831), 35-49; 106; T. W. Laqueur, Religion and Respectability:  Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780-1850 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976); J. C. Power, The Rise and Progress of Sunday Schools, 2nd ed.  (New York:  Sheldon, 1868), 184-8; G. A. Moore, The Story of Brown Street Baptist Church, Salisbury, 1655-1955 (Salisbury: [n.d.], 1955), 22.