December 15 saw a capacity congregation of 160 gather for the 80th anniversary of the first Sunday service held on the site of Broadstone Baptist Church.
Led by the pastor, Tim Gamston, the address was given by the guest speaker Mr Steve Brady, the Principal of Moorlands College at Sopley. Joining the regular church family were a number of special guests, including relatives of former pastors and those with links to the church in former years, one of whom attended services in the 1930s as a child.
It was in early 1933 that Harold Frank Joiner, the Broadstone postman purchased land in York Road for £60 to build the original wooden tabernacle church. Frank had taken the initiative after the Bible class he had started in 1928 in a room above his father Elias’s Broadstone shoe shop had outgrown the available space.
