Page 5 – The History of Rosebery Park Baptist Church and Pokesdown: The Rosebery Park Estate, cont’d

If you know where the name “Lockyer Hall” came from for the old chapel in Morley Road, let us know! (For all the theories about this, see note 33 in Sources of Information!)

I could only fit some of Pokesdown’s history gems on the map above, so I’ve made a table to acknowledge some more of them:^33a

Rosebery Park Baptist Church’s First Minister

Whilst meeting in the hired school room, and then for the first nine months in the newly completed chapel, services were led by a mix of “good and worthy brethren”, including an eight-day gospel mission led by Mr King of the Pastor’s College, Metropolitan Tabernacle.³⁴

Pastor Edward Lawrence was the first dedicated Minister of Rosebery Park Baptist Church, from 1893 to 1898. He had been a last-minute fill-in preacher on one Sunday in April 1893, who the congregation liked so much, they asked him to stay on! Under his leadership, Articles of Faith (a statement about what this church believes) and rules of membership were established. He and his wife are mentioned in these newspaper articles from 1895. “On the sands” means down on the beach!

The church’s history booklet explains: “Mr. Lawrence’s evangelical ministry was such that the small chapel became overcrowded and a larger building was erected on the site [in 1897], the original chapel being used for Sunday School work.”

“During his ministry the Sunday School, started in October 1892 had grown to forty scholars and a bible class for adult males, started on the first Sunday in 1894 with sixteen members.”³⁵