Revd. Reginald William Waddelow

The Revd. Reginald William Waddelow was minister of Broadmead Baptist Church from February 1947 until 1955. He came to Broadmead from Adelaide Place, Glasgow, having been originally invited in 1943 to succeed the Rev. R L Child.  When he arrived at Broadmead he was fifty, a Londoner with "a saintly mother and a father who was a person of strict honour and free thinking views, opposed to organised religion"

William Waddelow himself had been an active member of the Labour Party. He served in the First World War, was three times mentioned in dispatches and was wounded in action, losing an arm. Lying in no-man's-land he was convinced that he must devote his life fully to the service of God and after the war he began his preparation for the ministry at Manchester Baptist College.

During his sixteen years at a Glasgow city centre church he served on the City Council as a Progressive. His experience in this pastorate and his involvement in local government was invaluable when he became spokesman for Broadmead in the struggle for it to remain on its historic site when the centre of Bristol was rebuilt after the Second World War. He also shouldered responsibility for negotiating with the Corporation, the first steps in the new concept of a city centre ministry, and he served on the Bristol Education Committee and the Ministry of Labour Advisory Committee.

In addition to these tasks he never spared himself in his pastoral work. His selfless devotion to the cause of Broadmead and its people led to his being taken ill in October 1953. He was advised to rest. He died on 12th March 1955 aged 57.  In the words of Sydney Hall in Tradition and Challenge "the church owes its continued existence on the present site to his determination and courage."  

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The Rope Banister - Broadmead

The Church was founded in 1640. In the early days the congregation was subjected to persecution. The authorities would raid the services, hoping to catch and imprison the preachers. One of the ministers, Thomas Hardcastle was put in jail on seven ocassions!

During raids the congregation would block the stairwell by holding on to the rope banister whilst the preacher escaped over the roof tops.

When the church was rebuilt in 1969 a rope banister was incorporated as a reminder of our past.

A Brief History of the Church

Broadmead was founded in 1640 by five individuals with a concern for the right to worship according to conscience. Prominent among these was Dorothy Hazzard In spite of persecution by the civil and established church authorities, the church grew steadily stronger in numbers to the end of the 17th century.  The 'Broadmead Records', a diary started by Edward Terrill, and continued by others, tell of these persecutions and the determination of the early congregation not to be crushed. Terrill left his personal fortune to Broadmead; this paid the minister's stipend for many years, and also financed the establishment of the world's first training establishment for Free Church ministers, that eventually became the Bristol Baptist College.

Other famous Broadmead names include William Knibb (who campaigned successfully against slavery within the colonies), and Joshua Marshman (who assisted William Carey in the establishment of the Baptist Missionary Society in India).  Revd. R.W. Waddelow (1946-1954) worked tirelessly to convince the city planners of the day that there was a place for a worshipping congregation among the shops, with the result that Broadmead was allowed to remain when other churches were moved to the suburbs.