The Cave Adullam chapel

One late autumn day in 1840, villagers at Deeping St James witnessed an extraordinary event when dozens of people gathered on the banks of the River Welland alongside Bridge Street to participate in the traditional ceremony of immersion as practised by the Baptist faith. They came forward one by one to be received by a minister who gave a blessing before admitting them into the church.  

The event was all the more remarkable in that the officiating clergyman was the Rev Frederick John Tryon, the former Vicar of Deeping St James, a dissenter who had resigned his living over doctrinal differences only the year before. 

Mr Tryon, a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, had been a minister for several years but decided rather late in the day that he could not accept the Church of England's teaching regarding infant baptism and burials and he took drastic action by giving up his living and then ordering materials for the construction of a non-conformist chapel financed with the help of money from friends. As the building went up on the riverside site, parishioners thought that a new vicarage was intended but eventually discovered that it was a Particular Baptist foundation which opened on October 1839. 

A service was held to mark the official opening of the new chapel when Tryon gave one of his memorable sermons. A member of the congregation said afterwards that the minister’s preaching had “an individuality that was peculiarly his own and invested with an authority and reality that convinced those who heard him that he was a man sent from God to preach His everlasting gospel”. 

He was indeed a remarkable man who had been born at Bulwick, Northamptonshire, in 1813 and despite a boyhood accident to his right knee which gave him trouble throughout his lifetime, he became a skilful horseman. After Cambridge, he took holy orders and was ordained at Durham Cathedral and after several controversial curacies was eventually appointed Vicar of Deeping St James where his preaching in church soon attracted large crowds, some who came long distances to hear him. 

Yet he is remembered today as a charismatic Baptist pastor who preached from his own chapel for over 63 years, his last sermon being delivered shortly before he died in 1903 at the age of 89.

The building still stands although now converted into a private residence but a stone tablet over the main door has been retained bearing the dated 1839 and the inscription Cave Adullam, a reference to the Cave of Adullam, a place of refuge for King David and his followers as described in the Old Testament, now referring to small groups of dissenters remote from power and hoping to return.

See also Frederick Tryon - a memoir