History of Countesthorpe Baptist Church
The fog of time has shrouded much of the history of nonconformity in the village of Countesthorpe prior to the 18th century. All the sources available to us identify the first Dissenter in the village as Mr John Gumley, who as a teenager attended the famous Baptist Church at Arnesby – the same chapel of Robert Hall fame. Apparently, he was the only nonconformist in Countesthorpe until his death in 1790. For whatever reason, many of the sources feel the need to mention that though he was a godly man, he boasted only ‘modest talents’.
Happily, Mrs Burley started a prayer meeting of Dissenters the same year Mr Gumley departed for glory. Sometime between 1790 and 1810, a building was erected for the use of the little band of Dissenters. This was rebuilt in 1829 as the current Sunday School Room. Until 1860 the church appears to have been an extension of the church at Arnesby, with no minister of its own or formal independence. Mr William Bassett is floating around the records during this era, as a supporter of the Baptists in Countesthorpe, but with a wider local ministry. In 1860 when Mr Basset died, one Rev Thomas Rhys Evans took the reins of oversight at Countesthorpe, while supporting a Rev Shem Evans at Arnesby. The author’s suspicion is that these suspiciously Welsh-sounding men were brothers, whose fraternal bond is a good metaphor for the relationship between the Baptist at Countesthorpe and Arnesby well into the mid-19th century.
In 1863, Countesthorpe Baptist Church achieved its independence with the aforementioned Evans as its first Pastor. Independence was marked with the construction of the current chapel, which owing to the zenith of Victorian economic might, was completed with no debt against it. Immediately the church settled into a pattern of gradual expansion with the work of the Sunday school prospering and the premises expanding into the early 20th century.
Like much Christianity across the English speaking world, the 20th century saw the church slide comfortably into liberalism and nominalism, which was only briefly interrupted by the Toronto blessing in 1994. From 1863 to the 1990s the church membership appeared to be approximately static, although it was undoubtedly greater prior to the Great War, based on photographic evidence from the period.
In 2005, a small evangelical party in the church managed to persuade the church to permit Aubrey Vaughan to become the Pastor, after the church had been without a full-time elder for almost a decade. Mr Vaughan hailed from Bethel Church in nearby Wigston, whose origins are in the Evangelical Free movement. During his tenure the Gospel was reintroduced to the life of the church and in 2017 the church adopted a new Constitution, which affirmed the Baptists’ historic Confession of Faith as the express representation of the faith of Scripture. Mr Vaughan retired in 2025, and left behind a church whose lampstand had been restored.