Lymm Baptist Church

John Johnson, an 18th-century Baptist minister of unconventional views, led a sect known as Johnsonian Baptists from around 1750. It was active mostly in the Cheshire and Liverpool areas. In 1759 a group of his followers bought land at Millington, between Warrington and Altrincham, and built a brick meeting-house there. It was registered for worship in October of that year. It was one of the earliest Baptist foundations in Cheshire, and rare because of its Johnsonian origins: most Cheshire chapels were associated with the General Baptists. There was earlier Baptist activity in the Millington area though: a meeting between John Wesley and an itinerant Baptist preacher John Pickup was…

The original, 1850, chapel (now the Ridgway Hall) has sandstone walls and a roof of slate tiles. The four-bay side walls are buttressed and have two-light windows with "nice" Decorated Gothic tracery. The original part of the Sunday school has prominent twin gables; gabled dormer windows light the later part. In its original form, the interior had many original fittings: two rows of box pews, a timberwork roof and a stone pulpit. A shuttered archway led to a baptistery at the east end.