Malton Baptist Church History

MALTON:
Malton Baptist Church History up to 1912.

The Malton Church is the result of the labour of the Itinerant Society. This Society had been founded at Bridlington, in 1817, and when meeting at Driffield, in 1821, Malton was discussed as a desirable preaching place. Work being straightway begun, six persons were baptised in the river Derwent before the year had closed. A Church was formed in 1822, and "Salem" was built in the following year. A series of brief pastorates was followed by the settlement of Rev. David Boyce, in 1840, when a remarkable revival was experienced under a mission conducted by Thomas Pulsford, an evangelist of the Itinerant Society. Thomas Pulsford-father of John Pulsford, our Baptist mystic-seems to have passed like a flame of Pentecostal fire through the Churches.

A hundred persons joined the Church at Malton, and it was necessary to add a gallery to the chapel. In 1857, Rev. Benjamin Shakespeare entered on the pastorate, and in the same year the Church sent Matthew Hudson to Horton College. Mr. Hudson's first charge was at Portland Chapel, Southampton, and it is of interest to learn that one of his daughters is the wife of Mr. Herbert Marnham, Treasurer of the Baptist Union. Mr. Spurgeon preached at Malton in 1860, the railway warehouse being crowded with nearly 3000 people. Mr. Shakespeare remained until 1863; his son, Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, M.A:,- was born at Malton during the first year of his father's ministry there. Space forbids our following the Church's history through the remaining years, except to add that the Church has had ten pastors since 1863, and that during the pastorate of Rev. Joseph Rigby (1879-93) a new school was erected and the chapel renovated. The Rev. P. Williams is the present pastor.