This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...a playground. The county gaol has now stood on that field for near sixty years. Our master and some of his friends took us picnics to Donnington Park and other favourite spots. He was then full of fun and frolic. We most of us went to a dancing-school in the ' Old Assembly Room, ' where I remember finding ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ...a playground. The county gaol has now stood on that field for near sixty years. Our master and some of his friends took us picnics to Donnington Park and other favourite spots. He was then full of fun and frolic. We most of us went to a dancing-school in the ' Old Assembly Room, ' where I remember finding myself on the floor in a Contest for a pretty partner, who when I last saw her, many years ago, was a grandmother. The ' Presbyterian Chapel' is to me an instance of the possible length and continuity of tradition, without many links. It was built, upon a lease of three hundred years from the Friary Estate, in 1698. Any one placed in the middle of three centuries seems a long way from both the beginning and the end. Let us see, however. In the year 1815, and for some time after, one of the most noticeable figures in the Friargate was a Mrs. Simpson, said to be eighty and the daughter of one of the founders of the Presbyterian Chapel. The oddity about her was that she refused to believe that the doctrine of the Chapel had changed in her time, or that she was not THE PRESBYTERIAN CHAPEL. 251 a Trinitarian. It certainly had changed. If she were eighty in 1820, she would have been born in 1740, and might be the daughter of a founder. Assuming the above date for her birth, when she was thirty-eight years of age--that is, in 1778--a part of the congregation went off, and had their services, first in the Market Place, then in a room behind the Town Hall, when a zealous member of the dissentient body built the Independent meeting-house, now replaced by a magnificent edifice. My father became possessed of the freehold of the Presbyterian Chapel. It had been offered to Lord Belper, whose immediate ancestor lay there, but he did not like small investments...
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