The Cloughfold Baptist Church in England had its beginning in 1692 when two cousins, David Crossley and William Mitchel wanted to establish a “Protestant Dissenters” congregation.
David Crossley was raised by a godly aunt and trusted Christ for his salvation before he was twelve. His cousin William Mitchel was brought to repentance and faith when he was nineteen – after the tragic death of his brother. William quickly began to grow in grace, and soon he was pastoring at Cloughfold, publically preaching Christ – for which he was arrested. While he was in prison, David became pastor of the congregation. At about that time David met John Bunyan and other Baptists, and he began studying what his Bible said about the ordinances of the church. On August 16, 1692, he was baptized. Shortly after William’s release from prison, he too was immersed. Over the next few years, the cousins lead their congregation to join them in the scriptural observance of baptism, and the Cloughfold Baptist Church was established.
More than a century later, on this day (November 8) 1828 the church borrowed £45 to build a schoolhouse for their burgeoning Sunday School. Five years later the loan was repaid with interest.
In 1876 a history of the Cloughfold Church was written.. In one chapter the author noted – “An important item in connection with the Sunday School is its library of nearly 800 volumes. It was founded in 1834. This institution had done excellent service during the forty-one years of its existence by supplying the scholars with instructive reading. We cannot, however, help recording our regret at the great change observable in the character of the books supplied to the present generation of scholars compared with those supplied to and read by the past two generations. The older books, viz., those supplied during the first thirty years of the library’s existence, are all of a solid, instructive kind, and mainly theological. Those purchased latterly are of the entertaining light-reading class …. We say this not with regard to Cloughfold alone, but with regard to Sunday school libraries generally. There is a vast difference between the namby-pamby religious novels that fill our library shelves at Cloughfold at the present day, and are so eagerly devoured by our young scholars, and the books which their fathers and mothers delighted to pore over in the winter evenings to fortify themselves against the errors and temptations of their times.”
