Baptists in Potton

The Baptist chapel lies some way back from the road on the north side of Horslow Street. As the photograph shows, it is an unprepossessing building, very different from the Baptist chapel in Carlton, say. In his booklet on the Potton baptists, published in 2005 the minister, Stan K.Evers states that the Church was founded on 13 Jun 1800 as shown by the minute book by nine people including the first two deacons, John Keeling and James Sprague.

Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service had the 1846 trust deed [X190/1 but subsequently permanently withdrawn] reciting surrender (the land was copyhold, held of the Manor of Potton Much Manured, rather than freehold) of a piece of land for the new meetinghouse on 25 Feb 1802, which was described as a piece of ground, part of an orchard belonging to a messuage of Jeremiah Lee in Horslow Street, then occupied by Mary Boutell, widow and Thomas Bonest abutting east on the house and garden of Jeremiah Lee called Potters; the land measured 70ft along the west side, 62ft to the east and 60ft on both north and south. Jeremiah Lee had purchased the property from John Harding and surrendered it to the first trustees Richard Wallis, Thomas Haggar, John Keeling, Joseph Ingle, James Sprague, Livett Frank, William Masters, George Lincoln, William Barracks, Edward Gardiner, Joseph Holder Freshwater and Jeremiah Lee himself.