POTP 01

Thomas Brooks' Pictures of the past begins

When the first church composed of Nonconformists residing in this locality was actually formed we cannot say with certainty. Puritans are known to have resided at Bourton, and in surrounding places, very early in the seventeenth century. A meeting for spiritual conversation and prayer was held at Slaughter in the beginning of it. In 1750, Mr Beddome wrote as follows (in the church book)

"That there has been in these parts a dissenting people for 150 years, Mr Reynolds Senior proves from the words of his grandfather, who was of a great age when he was a boy, and said that when he was a youth, he used to carry his grandmother to a meeting of Puritans at Slaughter, where they had used to assemble for spiritual conversation and prayer. Now from a computation of his own age and that of his grandfather, his great-great-grandmother must have attended at those meetings about 150 years ago."

We have no evidence that at that period they had forsaken the Established Church, and formed themselves into a separate society, but in the time of Oliver Cromwell there was a Baptist church, regularly constituted, existing at Bourton-on-theWater. This church belonged to an Association of Baptist churches which met at Warwick on the fourth of March, 1655. The churches whose ministers and messengers met on that occasion, were situated at Warwick, Moreton-in-Marsh, Bourton, Tewksbury, Hook-Norton, Derby, and Alcester.