Reproduced from

DRYPOOL - Being a History of the Ancient Parish of Drypool cum Southcoates
by M. Edward Ingram (1959)

41 Communion were infrequent by modern standards, but it must not be supposed that they were indifferent to the Sacramept. This was only received after due preparation had been made. Nor were they satisfied with slipshod methods of worship or ill-appointed churches, a fact which emerges from the Reverend Michael Hennell's " John Venn and the Clapham Sect." Venn was appointed to the living of Clapham by John Thornton in 1792, shortly after Thornton's son Henry had moved into a house called Battersea Rise, overlooking Clapham Common, and soon a number of people of like persuasion followed suit. They exercised a considerable influence on current affairs, particularly the Slavery question, whose abolition was perhaps their greatest achievement. The title" Clapham Sect" was applied to these high-principled people by Sidney Smith. A prominent member of the group was William Wilberforce, John Thornton's brother-in-law, and though the Sect was located in London it could almost be said to have had its roots in Hull. There may be some connection between the somewhat chill climate of this small portion of East Yorkshire and the rather Puritanical outlook of its inhabitants. It may be the latter which was responsible for the fertility of the soil into which the Evangelical seeds fell. Wilberforce, Venn and Simeon were born in the same year, 1759. The former's father, Robert, was patron of Drypool, and William in his turn presented the living to Venn's son in 1827. Wilberforce owed his conversion to Isaac Milner, who had been an Usher, under his brother Joseph, when the latter was Head Master of the Hull Grammar School. Wilberforce had been at the school, when quite a young boy, but the story of the famous continental tour and his subsequent conversion is well known. We have already noted the Thorntons' connection with Hull. The family stemmed from Robert, the ejected and much persecuted Rector of Birkin, and his descendants had come to Hull as merchants. Like the Wilberforces they were bankers.

42 DrypoolChurch from the north in 182. From a lithograph [Click image for larger version]