Memoirs of the Rev Dan Taylor
Memoirs of Rev. Dan Taylor, the late Pastor of the general Baptist Church, including diary extracts.
Author: Adam Taylor
Date: 1820
Location: Halifax
Format: Biography
Document ID: 101510
Library ID: 28129906
"Memoirs of the Rev. Dan Taylor, Late Pastor of the General Baptist Church, Whitechapel, London; with Extracts from his Diary, Correspondence, and Unpublished Manuscripts." by Adam Taylor, published London, 1820.
The Rev Daniel Taylor (1738-1816), Northowram-born coal miner, originally joined the Methodists in 1761 but left - due to the authoritarianism of John Wesley - and set up an independent group of dissenters in 1763 - the Birchcliffe Baptists. He was ordained a General Baptist in the same year and in 1764 the group built the Birchcliffe Chapel at Hebden Bridge. It is said that Taylor personally quarried and built a lot of the Chapel himself. In 1769, he co-founded the Heptonstall Book Society and stayed at Birchcliffe until 1783 - where he was succeeded by Rev John Sutcliffe - then moved to Halifax, and then to London. In 1770, he founded the New Connexion of General Baptists.
The Birchcliffe Chapel was demolished in 1803, and a new one constructed nearby - under the minister Henry Hollinrake - with a Sunday School being built in 1827. A third chapel was opened in 1899 when dry rot was discovered in the old one. This latest Chapel closed in 1974, when the Yorkshire Baptist Association asked that it be demolished. It survived and the building is now the Birchcliffe Centre.
His younger brother, John Taylor, was also a Baptist minister, and wrote his own memoirs. See document 101509
