Newbury Baptist Church was founded in 1640, when a few like-minded believers secretly met in the home of a local clothier, Thomas Merriman.
At that point in history, this movement was in its infancy; only a small handful of recognised Baptist churches were already in existence.
Why were conditions so favourable in Newbury, to allow this fledgling church to take root and then flourish for four centuries?
Historically, Newbury is regarded as one of England’s most important cloth producing towns.
During the Middle Ages, the surrounding Berkshire Downs was prime grazing land for sheep, which provided a steady local supply of high-quality wool. Situated on the River Kennet, the town had access to the water power needed to operate mills which turned raw wool into woven cloth. Newbury also sat on the London to Bristol toll road, providing merchants with well-connected transport links for both wool and finished broadcloth, which was sent to domestic and international markets such as Antwerp.
These conditions attracted ambitious industrialists like John Winchcombe, “Jack of Newbury” who pioneered factory systems by gathering dozens of looms under one roof, centralising production and boosting export capacity. During the Tudor period, Newbury was a prosperous, dynamic hub for travellers, merchants and foreign refugees. Its cloth making communities typically had higher rates of literacy, fostering an independent, questioning culture.
However, Baptists were not the first dissenters in Newbury!
Long before the English Reformation, through a movement known as Lollardy, Berkshire was a stronghold for resistance to the medieval Catholic Church.
Lollardy was an underground network which followed the teachings of John Wycliffe (c. 1328–1384), an Oxford theologian and early reformer whose radical ideas laid the groundwork for subsequent religious reform. Often called the "Morning Star of the Reformation," his core teachings challenged the wealth, corruption, and theological authority of the Catholic Church, and emphasised the supremacy of scripture and the need for the Bible to be accessible to all.
The term “Lollard” derives from the Middle Dutch word lollaerd and was a derogatory nickname meaning “mumbler” or “mutterer”, used to mock the style of worship preferred by its adherents and their low social and academic status compared to that of established clergymen.
Newbury’s proximity to Oxford and its strategic waterways and roads served as conduits for transporting illicit pamphlets, radical reformist literature as well as itinerant preachers into the region.
Dissenting (considered heresy by the established Church) quickly took root as literate artisans, weavers, and merchants read and debated John Wycliffe's translated scriptures.
They actively gathered in homes and pubs to discuss texts, bypassing the traditional clerical monopoly on knowledge. The economic independence of the town’s burgesses and merchants meant they could financially support and protect dissenting ministers, even when they clashed with the Crown or the established Church hierarchy. Official records of the 1440s show that the congregation of St Mary the Virgin in Speen had strong Lollard sympathies, with heretic activity being detected and investigated.
As a result of Newbury being a Lollard hotbed, it has both a history of intense religious friction and a legacy of early Christian martyrdom. In 1490 Thomas Taylor, a Newbury textile worker, was charged with possessing forbidden Lollard books and denying transubstantiation (bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ).
In the early years of Henry VIII's reign, a clandestine group of nearly 200 "secret favourers of God's Gospel" met in and around the town. They managed to evade detection for about 15 years before being betrayed: three or four of them were burned at the stake. In 1518, yet another cloth worker, Christopher Shoemaker, suffered the same fate because he read the Gospels to a local disciple named John Say.
Following Mary I’s reintroduction of the medieval heresy laws in 1555, Newbury once again became a focal point for religious dissent. Three notable Protestants, Julius Palmer, Thomas Askew and John Gwyn were tried for their faith in St Nicolas’ Church and condemned to death. As they were fastened to a wooden stake on the Enborne Road, two contemporaries recorded that over 300 people witnessed them praying together and singing Psalm 31, remaining steadfast to the end.
Newbury is home to one of the UK’s oldest Baptist congregations.
Yet our historic market town was a hotbed for dissenting voices long before Thomas Merriman and his fellow founding members.
So what made Newbury a prime location for the fledgling Baptist movement? Church member and historian Ingrid Rankin unpacks the dramatic story of our roots…
Throughout Elizabeth’s I’s reign, local authorities constantly struggled to enforce the 1559 Act of Uniformity which required weekly church attendance under threat of fines. Many local gentry and commoners in Berkshire continuously refused to attend the established Anglican services or take Holy Communion, becoming known as recusants.
Newbury’s pattern of resistance to orthodoxy established a historical tradition of standing firm against official religious authorities. Paradoxically, martyrdoms fuelled rather than extinguished religious dissent. Instead of intimidating people, the executions of early reformers served as catalysts, driving the English Reformation forward and ultimately strengthening the resolve of local Protestants. Despite severe persecution, reformist ideas were passed down through generations and prepared the region to welcome religious change.
Whilst Newbury maintained a continuous undercurrent of reformist dissent for over 150 years, the immediate decades before 1640 particularly prepared the ground for the founding of a Baptist church.
By the early 17th century and the reign of Charles I, wider opposition to the Crown's High-Church policies grew. Throughout Berkshire, Puritan minded ministers and parishioners increasingly objected to traditional ceremonies, such as kneeling for Holy Communion or the use of the sign of the cross in baptisms.
In 1634, the Reverend Thomas Parker, a former master at Newbury Grammar School, along with other Puritan families, fled persecution to Massachusetts and established a settlement that they named Newbury.
The Baptist message of a simplified, egalitarian faith deeply resonated with the labouring population who felt disconnected from the state church and its financial demands. The region became highly Puritan and subsequently leaned towards Parliamentarian support during the English Civil War, reflecting a long-held tradition of questioning centralised authority.
The presence of Parliamentarian forces and Puritan soldiers travelling through the area provided a receptive environment for nonconformist ideas to spread. Initial places for Baptist worship were primarily chosen to avoid arrest and to enable baptism of new believers by full immersion. As with the development of Newbury’s cloth industry, once again, the River Kennet and its tributaries came into their own, perfectly suited to this purpose, laying the groundwork for today’s Baptist congregation.