Until the nineteenth century England was a land of villages. With the exception of London the towns were small, and the vast majority of the people worked on the land and lived in little settlements of perhaps a few hundred people. Until the coming of the railways such villages were quite isolated; a farmer and his wife might take an hour's journey to the nearest town once a week to sell their produce, but their labourers would hardly see the world outside the village from one Michaelmas to the next. They had their church, their tavern and perhaps a shop, and they needed very little else. For the children a visit to the yearly fair ten miles away was an adventure.

It was in such villages as this, as much as in the towns, that 'the Baptist cause was born and grew. There were fellowships from the eighteenth century in small Kent communities like Smarden and Headcorn. Eythorne itself, the cradle of the work at Salem, still numbers less than three thousand inhabitants. Almost certainly some of the centres of village worship which were afterwards associated with Salem are in fact older than Salem itself........

No detailed records of the early work around Dover have survived. Letters from the Salem church to the Association mention one 'outstation' from 1843 and two from 1846, and it is likely that one of these was the church at Temple Ewell, where work had been started some years earlier by the church at Eythorne, but in the early Salem minutes there is no other reference to them. They were probably more or less independent fellowships, meeting in a cottage or barn, organising themselves and only needing visits from the larger churches' preachers to supplement the lay workers of their own congregations.

By the late eighteen sixties, when Salem was preoccupied with its own troubles, it could have been providing very little help for the village congregations. Eythorne, who were obviously still keeping an eye on the fellowship at Temple Ewell, recorded in 1867 that the chapel had been closed for two years. They sold the meeting-house they had been using to the Primitive Methodists in 1871, and used the proceeds to build a more urgently needed place of worship at Ashley. That the fellowship did not fail altogether was due in a large measure to the work of a local lady named Caroline Fector, spinster daughter of a well-known Dover family, who took an interest in the Baptist cause and provided money and encouragement and a place for them to meet in the building which is the present chapel, just across the road from their original venue.. ........

 ....In 1883 Caroline Fector not only gave the building where they were meeting and its furniture to them outright, but made over the interest on £750-worth of stock for its upkeep - only stipulating that a Particular Baptist doctrine, 'as taught by C. H. Spurgeon', should always be preached there...........attendance and enthusiasm were variable. In 1914 the church decided to try the idea of a resident pastor there, and a man named Henry Dobson was appointed and stayed for seven years. The work steadied. A Sunday School had been started many years before, and under Walter Holyoaks guidance it was reorganised and a proper system of class teaching begun. This seems to have had excellent results, so by the time Dobson left the school was outgrowing the buildings. Howard Bradley and his wife were appointed superintendants in 1921, and they had been there only two years when the church opened a new ‘institute` at the back of the chapel for the use of the Sunday School on Sundays and other groups met during the week.....

.......So at the beginning of the new century, of the four chapels which were once under Salem’s care only Temple Ewell remains. The work in all the villages has been worthwhile; no one can say how many people have been influenced by the witness of the men and women who served there. In Capel & St. Margaret’s that work has not ceased; it goes forward, though in other forms. But only Temple Ewell remains attached to Salem.

There has been a change of outlook in the past decade, and now the Temple Ewell church is considered not so much a dependent as a partner, a smaller fellowship but equally accountable and having an equal share of the time and work of the minister. In 2000 the church adopted the logo that was designed for Temple Ewell in 1992. And underneath the words were added ‘Two fellowships, one church`. ......

Excerpts from ‘SALEM` by Pamela Godden. The book is available from The Weigh Inn, Worthington Street Dover; The Vine Bookshop, Folkestone and direct from the church. Cost £7.50, with notes and references also available for 50p.