Of Parliament and Intruders

Hexham Abbey has a board with a list of ministers of that place of worship just insdie the main door. The name of Thomas Tillom occurs with the name 'Intruder' next to it. That identifies him as a preacher placed in the church at the behest of Cromwell's Commonwealth.

He was sent from London in response to the petition of people of Muggleswick for a preaching minister. Cromwell's toleration of mainstream Protestant denominations played its part in the fact that the man who was sent was a Baptist! Taking up the post of Lecturer in 1650, Tillom was ready to baptise - by total immersion, of course - a handful of believers within a year. It is rumoured that he constituted a Baptist church in the Abbey itself!

Upon the Restoration of the Monarchy Tillom was ousted from his position and it became dangerous to be anything but a member of the Church of England. The Baptists fled to the area around Muggleswick, holding their clandestine meetings in two locations, one of which was Rowley.

It was two hundred years later when the mining industry was getting into full swing that members of the Rowley congregation moved to Waterhouses and began evangelising the miners, forming baptised believers into the church which is now Esh Winning Baptist Church.

In a handful of years there was a growing evangelistic concern for the surrounding villages and the Watergouses church planted several churches in the area including Ushaw Moor, and Our own church at Langley Park in 1881.

Over the years the Langley Park congregation continued to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God. It shared a minister and church oversight with Ushaw Moor and Esh Winning until the late 1970s.

Since then it has had three of its own ministers the latest being the Rev. Alan Brunton who has been pastor since October 1989.