Frisby Baptists

Frisby has a long history. Originally named by the Danish invaders of the kingdom of Mercia, the name means "the farmstead of the Frisians" - in other words, the Angles who already lived there.
The original church of St Swithin's was dedicated by King Peada of Mercia, and was the only church - although frequently rebuilt - until after the Reformation.

Elias Frisby founded the Zion Baptist Chapel in 1684. In 1685 this split into two churches - Zion and Salem. The two chapels were built next door to each other, and their congregations would regularly throw apples, rocks or rotten eggs at each other on the way to church.

In 1745 the Salem chapel's congregation again divided over the issue of where baptism should take place. The Sons of Living Water insisted that baptism should be in the waters of the River Soar - although, after a number of drownings, they switched to using the brook. The other group, which continued to use Salem, insisted that they would use the well outside the chapel. Due to their idiosyncratic attitude to baptisms, which took place at Christmas, they also suffered the occasional death, due to hypothermia. This is the sort of bone-headed stupidity that has always encouraged the Christians of England, however, and the occasional "Cold Martyrdom" merely encouraged conversions.

The final split in the Frisby Baptists occurred in 1986, when some members of Salem insisted on joining the Baptist Union "to bring Baptists together". As a result, the Union Baptists started to meet in the old Zion, which had been empty since the Baptist Flu of 1924  (the last Sons of Living Water having been swept away in the floods of 1875).  The people who remained in Salem renamed themselves the Independent Baptists, on the grounds that whatever else they may or not be, they were certainly independent.

The Union Baptists ceased to exist after the Great Constitutional Controversy of 1998. Put shortly - although it only required a simple majority of the Chapel Meeting to sack the minister, it needed a two-thirds majority to appoint a new one. After Revd Syston Whyte-Plumb was sacked for alleged drunkenness on the job, his followers (who made up 34% of the Chapel Meeting) refused to allow the election of a new one, and blocked 27 successive candidates. Eventually they all got bored and went off to other villages - at which point the Union Rump, as they were known, rejoined the Independents.

Collectively the new combined congregation knocked a doorway through between the two chapels, to form one combined building.  Technically today we have the Zion Chapel and Salem Hall - or possibly vice-versa. It's so hard to remember. Revd Syston Whyte-Plumb became minister of the combined congregation, until it was discovered that he really was as drunk as the Union Baptists had said.

After Syston Whyte-Plumb, the most recent minister was the Revd Drayton Parslow. However after a serious mis-apprehension of the concept of "as pants the hart for cooling streams" he was forced to leave. He is believed to be leading a Baptist church in Bedfordshire which he describes as "growing", while his wife Marjorie has unexpectedly become the minister of Frisby Baptists.

We are glad to announce that, through the technological brilliance of Young Keith, the details of life at Frisby Independent Baptists under Revd Drayton have been recovered, and now form part of the annals of the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley.