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Ebenezer Baptist Church in Bury (now, Bury Baptist Church)

The beginnings of what became Ebenezer Baptist Church in Bury go back to Andrew Nuttall (1784-1846) from Haslingden who came to live in Bury and started the "cause" as a branch of West Street Church in Rochdale, and later taken on by the "County Home Mission". In 1844, the Home Mission appointed Joseph Harvey as its missioner, and this led to the church being constituted in 1845 with fifteen members including Joseph Harvey (the founding pastor) and Andrew Nuttall. 

During Harvey's pastorate, in 1853, the church moved into a permanent building on Knowsley Street (on the site of the present Art Picture House opposite the travel interchange, see picture). There may have been another Baptist church building on Spring Street completed in 1852. 

Joseph Harvey would later baptise as a believer Franklin Howorth (d.1882), former minister of Bank Street Unitarian Chapel in Bury. Howorth amicably resigned the ministry at Bank Street and in 1854 started the "Free Christian Church" which met at the same "Commercial Buildings". In 1855 he publicly embraced evangelical convictions in a letter to his congregants. "Christian Church" and would later meet in a purpose-built building on Rochdale New Road from 1860 to 1971 (now "Kashmir Express" supermarket). 

Trinity Baptist church was started in Radcliffe by Guy Medley Harvey in 1880 and its first building was on Church Street (moved to Wellington Avenue in 1983). Chesham Baptist Chapel in Bury began in 1881. 

In 1898, during the pastorate of Benjamin Bowker, Ebenezer church moved from its premises on Knowsley Street to a new building on Tenterden Street (next to the railway) with capacity for 500 worshippers. 

In the year 1971, three existing Baptist congregations in Bury, namely Ebenezer, Chesham and the Free Christian Church, merged to form Bury Baptist Church which since then has met at 114, Manchester Road.

NB. There is another Baptist church in Bury, which dates back to 1835, and is now known as Radcliffe Road Baptist Church (formerly Providence Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel on Bridge Street). 

Pastors of Ebenezer Baptist Chapel (later, Bury Baptist Church)

            Andrew Nuttall (not ordained) began the work 
1845    Rev. Joseph Harvey (founding pastor) 
1853    Rev. Humphrey Sykes 
            Rev. Abraham Ashworth
            Rev. William Stokes
            Rev. S. Sykes
            Rev W. H. Knight 
            (what later became Northern Baptist college was run at Chamber Hall in Bury 1866-1873)
1871    Rev. James Webb & Rev. Joseph Harvey (joint pastorate) 
            Rev. R. H. Brotherton 
1874    Rev. William Bury (churches planted in Radcliffe and Chesham during his pastorate) 
1881    Rev. W. L. Mayo
1885    Rev. Benjamin Bowker (new church building on Tenterden street completed 1898)
1902    (Vacant)
1905    Rev. Percy Burnett (later became an Anglican priest in the Anglo-Catholic tradition) 
1910    (Vacant) 
1913    Rev. D. B. Davies
1915    Rev. Joseph Tinker (1924) 

1932    Rev. J. Fielding (1936)

1945-1952 Vacant 
1952    Rev. Owen? 
1956    T A Roberts student pastor 
1959    Rev. Edward Porter (until 1961) - lay pastorate 
1962    Rev. F. Vaughan (until 1965) 
1967    Rev. Arthur Roberts (three Baptist causes in Bury amalgamated in 1971) 
1978    Rev. Jim McEwan until 2009 
2009    (Vacant?) 
2011    Rev. Timofey Cheprasov 
2019    Rev. Paul Greenlees (current pastor).   
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