Abbeyhill Baptist Church, Brunswick Road

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 22 Sep 2009

In the dark days of Austerity following the Second World War this brightly-lit chapel provided a warm welcome on cold, dark winter nights in the shape of the Friday 'Band of Hope'. Local urchins from the surrounding streets were often entertained by visiting American Baptists (preachers, choirs, bell-ringers etc) who must have been using donations from home to fund the copious quantities, for that time, of free orange juice, sticky buns, doughnuts and 'cokernut snowball' cakes that were devoured by the spectating bairns. These would often express their boredom by staging mini-riots, with unwanted buns flying through the air, that brought the proceedings to a temporary halt. That's ingratitude for you. But singing "My cup's full and running over" did seem a bit incongruous amid the post-war shortages of the time. The Devil's nearest lair was Middleton's pub where many a faither spent much of his pay-packet on the same Friday nights. The Baptists, in keeping with their Temperance tradition, attempted to immunise the offspring against the demon drink by having them 'take the pledge', which ran something like this: "I promise with God's help to abstain from all intoxicating liquors as beverages, and to encourage others to do the same". Apart from an occasional deviation from 'the straight and narrow path' (another Baptist lesson of lifelong significance), it worked! Image

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