Common Hall Lane Baptists, Chester

Common Hall Lane, Chester, Baptist Congregation – The following individuals were all attendants in the fledgling Baptist interest at Common-Hall Lane in Chester in the late 1770s. John Mellor was a plumber and shot-maker in Common-Hall Lane in 1794; he had purchased the building that was being used by the church, a building formerly occupied by the Independent congregation. Thomas Crane was a cork-cutter in Barrell-well. His daughter would marry the Scotch Baptist layman and writer, William Jones. Mr. Roberts was apparently dead by 1791, but a Mrs. Roberts was listed as a grocer and tea-dealer in Nicholas Street. At the time of this letter, there had been no permanent pastor for the Chester meeting. Samuel Medley of Liverpool and Joseph Jenkins, then at Wrexham, occasionally preached at Chester, as did John Sandys when he was Shrewsbury. Apparently, Hartley was being considered on trial in 1779. A work was not established at this time, but in 1782 several members from Joseph Jenkins’s church at Wrexham were dismissed “for the purpose of joining with others to form a Particular Baptist Church in Common Hall Lane, Chester.” Some of these individuals, such as Thomas Crane, would eventually form, under the leadership of Archibald McLean and William Jones, a Scotch Baptist congregation in 1786 (see letter 49). The first minister appears to be a Mr. Ecking, who had been baptized by John Sandys and called out by the Shrewsbury church. He arrived at Chester in April 1783, but he died in early 1785. Alexander McLean came to Chester in October 1786 and spent five weeks, essentially turning the small congregation into a Scotch Baptist meeting. See William Jones, Autobiography of the Late William Jones, M.A. (London:  J. Snow, 1846), 10-31; Margaret F. Thomas, Brassey Green & Tarporley:  A Baptist History (n.p.: 1984), 9; Universal British Directory, 2:709, 718, 714, 720.