The Long Preston Baptist Chapel

The Long Preston Baptist Chapel was built in 1833, though the work began back in 1782 in the house of one William Holgate who “sustained at his own expense Mr. Ross, who lived and preached in his house.” Sadly, the church closed in 1970 when dwindling congregations could not sustain the building, though a local tradition blames a fire, the resulting damage being deemed too large to put right. Now, long grass indicate's the chapel's location. The place is rather pleasant, yet tinged with melancholy.

It seems remarkable that such a small settlement could support both a nonconformist chapel and a parish church, but then people of the past were more pious than their descendants, whose mystical awareness and metaphysical knowledge is minimal or non-existent. Today, only the graves survive, the pulpit’s life-giving message of hope and joy, silenced. When a nation closes its churches and ruins its chapels, the whole land follows suit.

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. Proverbs 29:18

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