At the close of 1831, the present pastor, Mr. Isaac Evans, came on probation, and was ordained July 24th, 1832. During the ministry of Mr. Evans a new school-room has been erected, at the cost of £120, which was opened in the year 1847. The Sabbath-school is conducted here, containing about 125 children.
The present number of communicants is 80. One service is conducted at Floor every Sabbath, where the congregation is considered as a branch of the Church at Weedon. The present Chapel there was built in the year 1810.
Some alterations and improvements have recently been made in the Chapel at Weedon, at a cost of £115, which will, we trust, add to the comfort of the place and the accommodation of the congregation. All would be accompanied with the fervent and united desire of the pastor and his flock that abundant tokens of the blessing of the great Head of the Church may attend all their efforts.
CHAPTER XII.
MEMORIALS OF THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH AT LONG BUCKBY.
The populous village of Long Buckby, containing more than 2600 inhabitants, has a neat and commodious Independent Chapel, capable of seating about 700 hearers, with convenient school-rooms, and a respectable dwelling-house for the minister. Previous to the erection of the present building there was an old Chapel, which had stood for many years in another situation; but it is much to be regretted in this case, as in some others, that no accounts have been preserved of the origin or early history of this Church.
Before the year 1662, when Mr. Richard Allen, who became one of the ejected ministers, preached in the parish Church of Norton, a short distance from this village, amongst other places mentioned from which hearers came to attend on his ministry, there were some from Long Buckby; but whether it was very soon after the ejectment of their favourite preacher that they sought the ministration of the Nonconformists in this place we have no account. The earliest notice we find of an Independent minister at Long Buckby is in the account of the ordination of Mr. Tingey, at Northampton, in 1709, when a Mr. Jackson, minister at Long Buckby, was present. In the account which Mr. Sanders, one of the pastors of the Church at Kettering, gives of his ordination, as preserved in the records of that Church, which took place November 23, 1721, he states—"Mr. Cartwright, of Buckby, began with prayer, and prayed well." This proves to us that there was a Mr. Cartwright, a Dissenting minister, at Buckby, 131 years ago. Again, we find his signature attached to the certificate of Mr. Hextal's ordination at Creaton in 1738, which shows us that his ministry extended over some considerable period in this place. He was also engaged in the ordination of Mr. J. Heywood, at Potterspury, in 1740.
As a further memorial of him, we have discovered a very old upright gravestone in the Churchyard of Long Buckby, erected to his memory. With some considerable difficulty we deciphered the inscription, which states concisely his age, the time of his death, and the character he bore.