Newport, Isle of Wight, Baptists

Newport, Isle of Wight Baptists. The following account taken from Walter J. Roberts, A Short History of the Baptists of Newport Isle of Wight (Newport, I.W.: Yelf Brothers, 1959). 

Roberts writes that Thomas Helwys established the first Baptist church in Spitalfields, in 1612. He claims that Baptists were meeting there in the 17th c., and General Baptists by 1721 (a John Cooke of Pyle Street) (Roberts, Short History 5).  John Sturch and Robert Aspland would be ministers of the High Street General Baptist congregation in the 18th and early 19th centuries (5), with Aspland taking the congregation pretty much into the Unitarian camp. About that time a group began to form along Particular Baptist lines, and Calvinistic. He claims that a group of Calvinistic Baptists, led by Mr Mursell, were meeting in a room near the The Duke of York inn in 1795. Out of this group would  come the church eventually meeting in the Castlehold  in 1809 (6).  Thomas Dore, formerly of Lymington, was the first minister chosen in October 1809 to lead the new church (7). Among the original trustees was John Shoveller, ‘dissenting minister’ (7), who would become the minister in 1812, and William Mursell of Lymington, an ironmonger. Shoveller would stay there only about one year (8). The church split in 1821, a group led by William Granville at Castlehold and John Franks in Town Lane (9).  Eventually the two congregations rejoined under Franks; upon his resignation in 1828, Eliel Davies (b. 1803) became minister at Castlehold, remaining so until 1834 (11).  He was from Ivimey’s church in Eagle Street and was supported by William Read of the Wellow church, I.W., and the I.W. Independent minister, Rev. Binney (11).  A Sunday School was established in 1813.  Frederick Trestrail succeeded Davies and served from 1835 to 1840; he returned as pastor again from 1871-82 (13).