One of the first Sunday Schools
1828 – The treasury book of the Cloughfold Baptist Church of England revealed that £45 was borrowed of John Heap for the purpose of building a Sunday school annex. It also records that the loan was repaid by 1833 with interest. The first effort to begin the Sunday school was in 1810 but it really took root about 1822. Cloughfold Baptist began as a dissenters church in 1675 and was led by two cousins: David Crossley and William Mitchel. Both had received most of their training from Mr. Kippax, minister of the nonconforming congregation in Rossendale, England. David had been raised by a godly aunt, and had received Christ before he was twelve. David led William to Christ during a time of bereavement over the death of his brother. William was arrested and imprisoned for preaching without a license. Upon his release the young men organized the Dissenter’s congregation. David’s study of God’s Word and his intimacy with John Bunyan led him to embrace the Baptist position of believer’s immersion and was immersed on Aug. 16, 1692. His cousin soon followed, and by 1700, both Crossley and Mitchel were Baptists by conviction. In that most of the Dissenters congregation had been led to Christ by the two men, the whole church became a Baptist church in name as well as practice. The church had a powerful history all through the eighteenth and on into the nineteenth century. [Abel Jones Parry, History of the Cloughfold Baptist Church (Manchester: John Heywood, 1876), pp. 65-66. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. pp. 609-11.]
Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon
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In Spirit and In Truth The Word 