Sheep Street Baptist Church,  Devizes

The current Church building on Sheep Street (below right) was opened in 1852 with the Reverend Charles Stanford as Minister. However the establishment of a New Baptist Church can be dated to 1807 when a section of the congregation at the   Church seceded from it and joined in communion with the Presbyterian Church led by Reverend James Biggs. This Church was immediately east of the current Church.

This Presbyterian Church seems to have originated in a congregation adhering to the ejected ministers William Gough, Timothy Sacheverell and Benjamin Flower who were all preaching in Devizes in the 1670s and 1680s. By 1690 Gough and Flower were recorded as leading a Presbyterian meeting. Around 1717 there was a meeting of 500 people, far too many for their premises, under Nathaniel Chauncey, Benjamin Flower's assistant. In 1734 they built a chapel behind the houses at the southern end of Long Street but this fell into decay and the congregation moved to a site on the eastern side of the High Street. In 1778 the Minister was the Reverend J. H. Fenner; he was also the principal of a boarding school at 41 Long Street. He is said  (ca 1788) to give a feast every Whit Monday to tradesmen, servants, and weavers, for which they paid, and to 'hold a club' every six weeks for poor townsmen (From: 'The borough of Devizes: Religious and cultural history', A History of the County of Wiltshire: Volume 10 (1975), pp. 285-314.)

In 1791 they opened a new Presbyterian Chapel in Sheep Street, on a site next to the present New Baptist Church. The Reverend Fenner was the Pastor there too  until 1796. In 1796 James Biggs, a Calvinistic Baptist, became Pastor. Reverend James Biggs was a Calvinistic Baptist - a Presbyterian - who had been a member of the Back Street Baptist Chapel in Trowbridge before studying at Bristol Academy and prior to becaming Minister  in Devizes. Shortly after Bigg's arrival  seceders from the Old Baptist Church joined the Presbyterians for worship. In 1807 the two groups agreed to take communion together and in 1820 they had joined together under the title, the 'United Society' meeting in the Presbyterian chapel. In the first half of the 19th century the Baptists had been growing in numbers. The Reverend James Biggs died in 1830. His son the Reverend Richard Biggs served the Church as a senior deacon and he was the Principal and school master of a private boarding school on Long Street. In 1839, he filled the office of Mayor of the Borough of Devizes".  By 1851  he had retired from teaching and his school was carried on by his son Dr. R.W. Biggs LLD.  He died in 1861 and his obituary says"....on earth too he was also known, both by the friends and the enemies of truth, as one that would never be bought or sold, for a more outspoken man rarely lived".  

Reverend Charles Stanford came to Devizes as Minister in March 1847. He was born in 1823 to Joseph Stanford - a shoemaker. He was for some time a shoemaker, then a lawyer's clerk and afterwards a bookseller's assistant. In 1839, at the age of sixteen, he commenced preaching, and in 1841 he entered the Bristol Baptist College. His first pastorate was at Loughborough in 1845.

In 1852 the new Baptist church was built for a cost of about £1800 on land donated by the Reverend Richard Biggs, to an architectural design of Mr. Hardick of Warminster. It had seating for 700 and a schoolroom. The Presbyterians were invited to worship. and the Presbyterian chapel next door was demolished. Charles Stanford drew large congregations, including wealthy townspeople. He evangelized the area, introduced cottage preaching and later became a national Baptist leader. In May 1858 he was elected co-pastor of Denmark Place Chapel, Camberwell, Surrey. In  1861 he received the full charge. He remained at Camberwelltill his death. In 1878 Stanford received the degree of D.D. from Brown University, Rhode Island, USA. He was the president of the London Baptist Assocation in 1882.  From November 1881 he became almost blind from glaucoma, but prepared his work for the press with a typewriter. He died in 1886. He had twice been married.

In 1851 the average congregation was 260 but on census Sunday there were 344 in the morning and 404 in the evening. By 1852 the congregation had doubled in size. The old meeting house was demolished and the site added to the burial ground of the chapel.

The Reverend S.S. Pugh came to be the Minister in either 1858 or 1859. He was born in Waltham, Essex in about 1826. He married his first wife Ann in Hertfordshire ca 1855. By 1861 they had three children - Ella 4, Catherine 3 and Bernard 1. Ella and Catherine were born in Southampton, but Bernard was born in Devizes. Ann died in December, 1862 aged only 31 - possibly in childbirth. Samuel Pugh married his new wife Mary in March 1865 in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. In 1871 they were living in Lansdowne Grove with 2 new children Mary 2 and Emily 1 and 3 older children, a nurse and house servant. In 1871 the Reverend Samuel Sargent Pugh  set up a school in his home at 3 Lansdowne Grove. The purpose was to provide "advanced education for boys". In 1874 the school moved to Heathcote House on the Green and his twin sons were born. In 1879 the Heathcote House School was renamed the Devizes Grammar School . Reverend Pugh died in 1899 and his twins sons Clarence and Cyril ran the school until it was sold to the Council in 1919.

In 1874 the schoolrooms were enlarged and there were restorations of the chapel in 1901, when gas lighting was introduced, and in1927, when electricity was provided. The roof was reslated in the 1960s and there were many improvements in the 1970s.

In 1978 and 1988 the Baptist Housing Association built the adjacent flats, partly on church land - seen on right of the photo above right. In 1989 a major improvement scheme was carried out.