The Baptist Group, Walney Island.
The small group of Baptists who made up Walney Baptist Fellowship have closed down. They held their last meeting together on Sunday 21st May 2000. Some of the members have joined with local much larger Baptist Churches, and some will worship with the other Walney Churches. The other members of the Ecumenical Partnership wish them all the best and every blessing.
Historical Notes
There is evidence that early Baptists were meeting on Walney Island around 1853, in a sod hut at Southend Farm. However, they never had a permanent place of worship. With the growth of the town of Barrow during the ensuing years, the small number of local Baptists met initially at the house of a Mr. Pickthall in Paradise Street (c.1864), and later in a schoolroom in Preston Street. Barrow's original Particular Baptist Church, a large building on Abbey Road, opened in 1873. During its earliest years, the membership was on a number of occasions torn by disputes and discord. For a few years around 1890 there was even a complete schism, when a dissenting minority met separately for several years in the Central Hall on Dalkeith Street. The 1873 Baptist Church was ultimately destroyed during the blitz on the town in April 1941 - the minister, who had been "fire watching" in the church at the time, being killed in this same air raid, along with another member of his congregation.
Barrow's new Baptist Church, on the corner of Park Drive and Abbey Road, opened in 1958. During the 1990s, Baptist members living on Walney began once again to hold regular separate meetings and to worship in the new ecumenical Bridge Centre, and then at Vickerstown Methodist Church.
For some pre-Reformation Christian history of the area our St Columba's page has quite a lot of information. Or you might want to try Furness Abbey. We also have a Pictorial History of Walney