1549-1866 Early Baptists in Faversham

The present Baptist church in Faversham was founded in 1867 but there were Baptists in the town long before that date. Henry Hart was a 16th-century religious radical and leader of the "Freewillers," an early Protestant separatist group centred in Faversham and other parts of Kent during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. He rejected the official Church of England's doctrine of predestination, emphasizing human free will and distrusting institutional church authority. He almost certainly rejected paedobaptism and this non-conformist group, associated with an ‘anglicised type of Anabaptism’, met in the house of a Mr Cole in Faversham c1549-50. After June 1550, members of the group fled to Bocking, Essex, to avoid persecution. Nevertheless, members of the movement, which now numbered some sixty people, were arrested - some imprisoned and others released on bail and bound to appear before the Privy Council. During the fanatical persecutions under Mary I, two leaders of the movement, Humphrey Middleton and Nicholas Shetterden, were burnt at the stake.

There are no records for the next 250 years or so, but by the early nineteenth century Baptists were congregating in the town. Thomas Barnes of Boughton described coming to Faversham in 1811 where he found about 'six in number meeting together in a room . . . they used to read sermons, and at times Mr. Samuel Eyles Pierce preached for them. In 1813, Mr. Pierce formed them into a Church.' (as recorded in 'The Earthen Vessel and Christian Record for 1878', ed Charles Waters Banks, Vol XXXIV). Samuel Eyles Pierce recorded in his memoirs that on Christmas Eve 1813 he had caught the stage from London to Maidstone, then walked to Faversham, preaching twice the following day, and three times the day after that (it being the Lord's day) before then walking to Canterbury for the New Year. 

Five years later a small Calvinistic Baptist meeting house was opened on the south side of Partridge Lane. In 1822 G W Beale was invited to the pastorate and in 1833 ‘more convenient’ accommodation in Gatefield Lane was erected by individual subscribers and supported by pew rents. It was opened on Good Friday 5th April 1833. In 1840 there were 69 church members with 170 children in the Sunday School. A Baptist church in Faversham joined the East Kent Association of Particular Baptist Churches in 1841 under Rev W H Denham, but this may well be another group. Hereafter the picture is disjointed and confused. The premises in Gatefield Lane were subsequently used as a place of worship by Plymouth Brethren and c1885 the building was sold and turned into the Faversham Club.