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“The Sewards End Mission Story
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About the Baptist Mission to Sewards End”1863-1963 Written by John E Maddams


Today Sewards End is a village on the road to Radwinter, It has the status of a Parish within the Uttlesford District and it has a Councilor on that District Council. One of the larger communities of Uttlesford, the largest in fact, is the town of Saffron Walden. For many centuries it had the status of a Borough and from 1836 a Municipal Borough and Sewards End, Little Walden and Audley End were hamlets within the Borough. From 1974 Sewards End was a ward of Saffron Walden until in this century it became a Parish.

It has an Anglican Chapel of ease and a Village Hall. It is acquiring a Village Green

Earlier in the last century it had 2 pubs and a post office-store, and a Baptist Mission Hall built in 1938.

There have been Baptists since the middle of the 19th century when the place was sometimes called Sewers End and maybe earlier, who worshipped at Saffron Walden or later at Ashdon. In 1898 five Saffron Walden Baptist Church members lived there and others along the road to Walden.

Just as Abbey Lane Congregationalist Church had taken an interest in Little Walden and one of the Player family had provided a Congregationalist Chapel there, which is now a house, so the Baptists worked at Sewards End visiting homes to make contacts, and care for the sick and the dying, tracting, holding open air meetings and trying to interest the children.

Peter Johnson, the Town Missioner ,and a member of Upper Meeting Baptist congregation wanted to set up a regular meeting there and some residents wanted him to read a sermon there weekly. However the Town Mission committee could not see that as part of their constitution. Peter came from Clerkenwell. He was the first of 4 missioners who served the ecumenical Town Mission set up in 1842, pioneered by Wyatt George Gibson and other Quakers, and Baptist Minister Josiah Wilkinson with support from the other local churches. Peter listed all the homes he visited and that included two thirds of the home of Sewards End, the poor people’s homes. Later ex-policeman Solomon Barton who lived in London road was appointed Missioner . In one of his journal he mentions visiting the homes of Mrs. Cooper and
Mrs. Moore of Sewers End Road. Solomon’s responsibility was to read the Scriptures to people who could not read, and distributed many tracts

The task of the Missioner was to visit the poor in their homes and not to organize meetings as this was regarded as the role of the churches. However he was involved in 1862 in meetings in a barn at Sewards End belonging to a sympathetic land owner.( Wyatt George Gibson). This had been started at the request of two women who felt that to such a meeting the men might come. Maybe it was these two women Mrs. Cooper and Mrs. Moore. This Barn meeting was visited by people from Painters Farm and Cole End who crowded in on summer evenings including a great number of boys, to hear the Scriptures read, and hear prayer. There were also a number of men of whom Solomon wrote “I dare say never goes to any other place of worship” Solomon found these meetings rewarding for his people became more willing to discuss religious feelings with him. He planned from his own pocket to buy lamps so they could meet during the winter but after a year working for the Town Mission it was closed down by the committee who gave him 3 months notice in 1863 .

His last monthly report was ignored as unsuitable and not connected with the Mission, for his reports had become filled with references to people in all kinds of moral and physical poverty and the need to help them; whereas he was only appointed to read the Scriptures and distribute tracts. So he had overstepped the mark of his role and displeased the people who funded the Town Mission.

However on October 26th 1863 Peter Smith, shopkeeper of Sew

TRAINING FOR LIFE

Including an account of The First Ten Years of the 1st Saffron Walden Boys Brigade Company. First published in 1990 by MCCPF as a Chapter in the Church History of Walden Baptists entitled MISSION UNFINISHED.

In the Beginning there were boys, to be employed and deployed for God..

In 1830 at Galston in Ayrshire was born to a hand loom weaver and small shop keeper a son named John Brown Paton,
He lived most of his life in England having trained as a Congregationalist minister
and he became the Principal of the Nottingham Congregational Institute. A position he held for 35 years, He founded the Boys Life Brigade and was President until his death in 1911. BLB developed a section for juniors called The Life Boys .

In 1854 a boy was born in Scotland who was called William Alexander Smith and about the age of 12 he used to march about with his school friends playing soldiers, with him at the head of the column. His Dad worked in China and died there and he went to live and work with his uncle in Glasgow until he upset his uncle who was a pacifist and an elder of the Free Church of Scotland Mission at West End Glasgow by joining the local army volunteer militia, the 1st Lanark Rifle Volunteers in which he rose and when he finally retired in 1904 he was a Lieutenant-Colonel. .William left his uncles business in 1878 to set up one of his own Smith, Smith and Company, with his brother Donald, which became a very successful business.

He became a Christian and in 1872 a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association and he became a member of the Free Church of Scotland Mission at West End Glasgow and in 1874 established there a Young Men’s Christian Society for the 17 plus group based on the YMCA principles. At that time most boys left Sunday School in their early teens to roam the streets annoying people, and there was a clear gap between SS and the YMCS, which William then determined to plug.

He took on the role of Bible Class Leader of a group of very bored boys and described them as coming to amuse themselves and that the teachers whole time was spent in keeping order, quelling riots, subduing irrelevant remarks, minimising attacks on one another or himself, and protecting the teacher’s Sunday hat from destruction. The boys would not listen for two consecutive minutes. William sensed that they needed something new that would bring into their lives self discipline, life skills, challenge, comradeship, and Christian experience.

So William got together with his 2 Volunteers lieutenants James and John Hill they established in 1883 a group they called The Boy's Brigade
The idea caught on and spread rapidly in Scotland, Ireland and England, to begin with mainly amongst the Free Church of Scotland and other nonconformist congregations but later in the Church of Scotland and the Church of England.
several other officers of his Volunteers Company assisted him and two later over the next 50 years became Presidents of BB James Alston and John Roxburgh

In 1886 they began camping in church halls at first and then under canvass. William died suddenly in 1914 and so did not live to see thousands of his boys killed on the battlefields of France and Belgium or the efforts BB made to provide them with Rest Huts and Clubs behind the lines.
Whereas BB featured strict discipline, physical training and drill as important elements of their programme BLB featured first aid and life saving as important to them and they were committed to peace which was a popular idea in Britain from 1919-1935 a period during which the BB was widely unpopular because some companies paraded with dummy rifles in drill and it was considered too militant.

In 1926 after much acrimonious argument on both sides BLB and BB united and was thereafter called The Boys brigade

After the relief of Mafeking another 19th century boy Robert Baden-Powell emerged as a hero as he had defended the city from the B