First Free Will Baptist Church and Vestry warrant a dedicated sanctuary, which was built in 1834. Details of its original form are sketchy, because it underwent a series of alterations to both its exterior and interior between 1872 and 1915. These rendered the building into one that is essentially entirely Late Victorian in character, with arched stained glass windows, shingling in the tower stages, and other features reflective of that period. The old vestry was built about 1835, and is typical of period academy buildings. This one was used to house a school and the vestry, the latter use in exchange for its siting on church-owned land.
Vestry the vestry committees were not established by any law, and had come into being in an unregulated ad-hoc process, it was highly convenient to allow them to develop. This was convenient when they were the obvious body for administering the Edwardian and Elizabethan systems for support of the poor on a parochial basis. This was their first, and for many centuries their principal, statutory power. With this gradual formalisation of civil responsibilities, the ecclesiastical parishes acquired a dual nature and could be classed as both civil and ecclesiastical parishes. In England, until the 19th century, the parish vestry was in