History
Forerunners
Baptist groups have been present in Wallingford since the Civil War era of the mid-17th century. Individual Baptists who gave leadership to like-minded folk came to Wallingford from Abingdon. One was Captain Consolation Fox of Cromwell’s New Model Army, who was linked to Sunday worshippers at the home of Mayor Richard Cox; about five other members are known either through their signature to a petition to Parliament or from their role as delegates to the Berkshire Baptist Association (1659/60).
Dr Edward Stennett led another group who were Seventh-day Baptists (ie worshipping on Saturday); they met in the castle grounds to avoid harassment from the town authorities, probably in a house that he rented there from Christ Church College, Oxford. His correspondence with Seventh-day Baptists in Newport, Rhode Island, is still preserved. Marrying into the Wallingford Quelch family, he fathered a dynasty of Baptist ministers, the most famous being Dr Joseph Stennett who was an early scholar of Wallingford Grammar School. Joseph went on to minister to central London churches and experienced Queen Anne’s appreciation of his sermons (still available at the British Library).
However by the start of the 18th century, it appears that town non-conformists, under the pressures of Restoration legislation, had returned to the established church or were travelling away to other places to worship. And what had been a 100-strong church of Baptists in nearby Warborough in the 1600s also disappears without trace at that time.
The start of our church
Wallingford’s parish church, St Mary-le-More, had Rev Thomas Pentycross as rector from 1771-1808. It was the era of Methodist revivals and Pentycross almost left to join the Countess of Huntingdon’s Calvinistic Methodist Connexion. Some in his congregation were influenced and rethought their position. One was a solicitor, Robert Lovegrove, who lived with Sarah (nee Toovey) his wife, in Calleva House on Wallingford’s High Street. He went further than Pentycross, became convinced of the Baptist position, was baptised as a believer by Rev Thomas Davis of Reading, and in that same year, 1794, built the chapel we still use. Then it was at the bottom of his garden but was given a Thames Street frontage. He had already gathered many supporters whom he promptly baptised and formed into a church. His opening sermon and the subsequent church records are lodged in the Angus Library of Regents Park College, Oxford.
Over the years 1794-1813 Lovegrove baptised over 150 people, encouraging them to covenant together in fellowship; a form of that covenant statement is renewed each year by each member. Another memorial reminds us of Susannah Toovey, Robert’s sister-in-law, who had married Rev Dr John Palmer, minister of Claremont St. Baptist Church, Shrewsbury, and itinerant evangelist of Welsh border areas; as a widow she returned to Wallingford. So our church has early links to the wider Baptist family, both though the Baptist Union and the Baptist Missionary Society (for which we formed an early local Auxiliary Society). Memorials in the church remember some of the Lovegroves’ daughters who died young. Most of the family are buried in brick vaults below the chapel floor.
Robert lived only to be 56 but his impact lived on, widened by the village evangelists he employed. These included: John Wells – Sotwell chapel, Joseph Ivimey – later the renowned Baptist historian and James Holloway -- from Wantage, and soon the successor minister to Rev Davis in Reading
Simultaneously with his founding of the Thames Street chapel was the founding of one in Roke village; his father was a Preston Crowmarsh farmer. Being a solicitor by training, he put the chapel in the hands of trustees in timely fashion, with a large number of founding members, both men and women, taking on that duty. (These days the church custodian trustees are the Baptist Union Corporation).
Consolidation and influence: Joseph Tyso to Henry Salt
The longest pastorate (1819-1848) has been that of Joseph Tyso, whose coverage in the New Dictionary of National Biography is helpful but not totally accurate. Growing up in Colchester and trained at Bristol Baptist College, he came here after pastorates at Helston, Cornwall, and Watchet, Somerset. In his time the church was re-fronted in Georgian style in 1821 and the small cemetery at its front was closed in favour of one at the bottom of the manse garden, 2 St Peters Street. Village outreach continued and Cholsey Free Church was formed. Support was given to Dorchester-on-Thames BC and a house at North Moreton was registered for worship as early as 1819. Perhaps that was a successor to the initiative that had been taken in the previous minister’s time to begin worship as far away as Steventon.
Rev Tyso guided the church to have communion services open to all Christians rather than just to members. It caused a split with those leaving moving to form and build Jireh Strict BC on the New Road/Wood Street corner in 1834; it would survive quietly for a century with the only local connection now being South Moreton Strict BC.
Many of the 100-plus members at Thames Street chapel were tradespeople in the town. Joseph Tyso, latterly through his deacon son Carey Tyso, found time to run a thriving specialist firm selling flower bulbs, cultivating new ranunculus hybrids that won many prizes. He also wrote books on biblical themes of prophecy, taking a rare futurist view of the signs of Napoleonic times. He found time to be involved with the Berks & West London (Particular) Baptist Association to which our church then belonged with ten others.
Thomas Brooks, formerly of the Bourton-on-the-Water church, had a substantial ministry between 1862 and 1877 until his health broke down. He was followed by the erudite young Dr T. H. Martin who went from us to Glasgow in 1883, where he combined a pastorate with teaching a new generation of Baptist ministers.
By the end of Victoria’s reign Rev Henry R. Salt was pastor (1883-1904). He had the sadness of a son die in his teenage years, a reminder that many of the congregation of that century were touched by untimely terminal illnesses. Salt was valued for his extra work as President of the Berkshire Baptist Association (1891) and wrote a valuable history of County Baptists, entitle “Gleanings in Forgotten Fields”, published in 1907
Alderman Hawkins, a local draper and benefactor was a key member then. His gift of an organ to the church was to see out the 1900s. Well before the 19th century closed, a gallery had been added at the rear of the sanctuary. However as WW1 approached the church, like the town, was no longer as strong as it had been.
(To be continued)