Bunyan’s Chapel 1920c

At the end of the nineteenth century, the three sisters who ran the Post Office - the Misses Frost and Mrs Brown - were main stays of the chapel, providing teas for the visiting lay preachers.

                                                                    The last days of the chapel

Religious apathy and the cost of building repairs (‘the floor was a bit dicey’) resulted in the closure of the chapel in 1987 By then there were just four or five faithful souls in the congregation and the Sunday School had also declined although 11 attenders were from one family, the Browns.

The closing service was held on Sunday 9 August 1987. Ministers and friends from Tilehouse Street and Wymondley attended the service including Mollie Foster who maintained the link with the Foster family of the seventeenth century. Bunyan’s Chapel had been used as a place of worship in Preston for a century.

ANDREWS

ANDREWS

ANDREWS

BROWN

BROWN

BURTON

BUSHELL

DAY

DAY

FRENCH

FROST

JENKINS

JENKINS

JENKINS

MARRIOTT

PALMER

PALMER

the north of the Green. The foundation stones were laid in April 1877 by Edward and Ebenezer Foster of Cambridge who were descendants of the Foster brothers of Castle Farm. The latter gave sanctuary to Bunyan and other non-conformist preachers.

The mother church of Preston Chapel was the Tilehouse Street Baptist Church (Salem) in Hitchin. This church was established around 1670 as a result of John Bunyan’s open-air ministry in Hertfordshire.

A meeting house was built at Hitchin in 1692. By the 1840s this was inadequate for the large congregation which was attracted and in 1844 the present Church was built.

The Church set up ‘Mission Stations’ around Hitchin which were regularly visited by senior members and lay preachers. These stations met in private homes or barns. Some, like the congregation at Wymondley, grew strong enough to build a chapel for themselves.

Following Bunyan’s secret ministry and the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, the first overt  nonconformist meeting was held in Preston in the cottage of the widow, Heath.

In the 19th century the station met in a barn at the rear of the tailor’s shop at  Preston Green (the barn  was demolished in the 1960s). In view of Preston’s place in the Bunyan tradition and also the strength of feeling for the faith in the village - in 1886 about half of the village population claimed to be Baptist - a chapel was built to

Sources: Preston Religious Census 1886 by kind permission of Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (Ref - DP 53/3/9); ‘Come Wind, Come Weather’ - G E Evans.

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There were four news reports which featured Bunyan’s Chapel in the early 1880s. These indicated that it was well supported in its early days.

In February 1882 there was a tea meeting on a Wednesday evening at the chapel which was attended by 150 villagers and friends. The addresses were given by Mr George Halsey and Mr J. Rennie, who was a familiar figure at Hitchin markets with his mobile stall loaded with religious tracts. The chapel’s Sunday School had eight teachers and 70 scholars.

Two months later, on Easter Monday afternoon, the chapel’s social tea attracted so many (230) that the party had to be divided. The prevailing feeling of optimism resulted in the hope that the annual meetings at Bunyan’s Dell (which had been allowed to lapse) might be revived.

The momentum of encouraging attendances at the chapel was maintained as, at the anniversary services in June of 1882, so many were in attendance (300) that the evening service was held on Preston Green. Mr Cole of Luton and Mrs Cobb of London were the preachers and Miss Marriott of Preston presided at the harmonium. The collection and proceeds from the tea raised £11 and it was noted that the Sunday School now had 12 teachers and 90 students.

Two years later, at the chapel’s anniversary service of 1884 there were still 200 present for the public tea and the collection raised seven guineas.

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