Leeds, Yorkshire, Baptists

Leeds, Yorkshire, Baptists – The following account was taken from C. E. Shipley, The Churches of the Leeds District,” in The Baptists of Yorkshire: Being the Centenary Memorial Volume of the Yorkshire Baptist Association, ed. C. E. Shipley (Bradford and London, 1912), 141-77.

The oldest church was the Zion church formed at Bramley in 1777, with Joseph Askwith as the first pastor (142).  Originally a paedobaptist, he was baptized at Gildersome on 2 January 1777.  He remained at Bramley until his death in 1795 (143).  He was succeeded by a Mr. Rigby, and he was followed in 1798 by Thomas Furney, who remained only for two years.  In 1803 John Trickett, of Bacup, came and he was ordained in 1804.  He remained until his death in 1825.  During his ministry, he conducted a school as well, and one of his pupils was Christopher Kitching, who left for Jamaica as a missionary in 1818 (143).  Stone Chapel, later the Baptist church at South Parade, Leeds, was formed in 1779 with Thomas Langdon as first pastor.  He was not ordained until June 1782, after the completion of the building at Stone Chapel, with Samuel Medley, Caleb Evans, and William Crabtree officiating (145). Langdon remained until his death in 1824, and was succeeded by James Acworth (145).  William Scarlett ministered at Gildersome from 1807-41 (155). The church at Farsley was formed in 1780, with William Roe from Sutton-in-Craven as first pastor (157).  He remained there until his death in 1795, when he was succeeded by John Whitehead, a student of Fawcett’s, but he died in 1797.  He was followed by James Ashworth of Gildersome, who remained until 1801, when he left to form a new meeting in Horsforth, a cause which languished however for some time before J. Sharpe came in 1807-23 (157).  A Baptist church existed at York from 1799 to 1818, but then dissension broke it up and it was not reformed until 1862 (168).