A MEADOW IN KETTERING

On Wednesday 29 September 1875, the 08.55am train from St Pancras carried a special passenger, bound for Kettering.

This was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the renowned Baptist preacher whose sermons had attracted congregations of 5,000 to the Metropolitan Tabernacle, at Elephant and Castle, in South East London, for 30 years.

Spurgeon was coming to preach at the Toller Centenary, celebrating the fact that two men, father and son, had been successively the ministers of what is now Toller United Reformed Church in Gold Street.

Thomas Northcote Toller had been minister from 1 October 1775 until his death in 1821. He was succeeded by his son, Thomas Toller, then aged 25, who died in 1885. A friend of Spurgeon’s, Godfrey Holden Pike, who travelled with him, wrote an account of this visit: “Though in the town itself business was not entirely suspended, it was easy to see that everybody was absorbed with the great event of the day. Each train as it arrived brought a fresh shoal of visitors, and the roads leading into Kettering seemed to pour each its living stream into the town, a dozen people behind one horse being no uncommon load.

“By two o’clock a vast congregation had assembled in the meadow, around a little platform which was erected to accommodate the preacher and a few select friends.”

It was estimated that the crowd gathered in the meadow, which in 1875 covered much of the land between the station and High Street, numbered about 10,000 – a significant proportion of Kettering’s population, then about 26,000.

Spurgeon’s sermon was based on Psalm 71: 17:  O God, you have taught me from my youth, and to this day I declare your wondrous works.  

While immense social changes had occurred in Britain during the Tollers’ 100 years of ministry, the truths of God remained relevant throughout, and still do.  

These same truths are still preached at Pollard Evangelical Church every Sunday.  You are welcome to join us to hear God’s word declared and explained. For us it is the highlight of the week, and could be yours also.