![\"sdkfmsllskfsk](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2025\/05\/Bend_in_the_Bela_-_geograph-2.org_.uk_-_354093.jpg\")
<\/a>After leaving the Lake District yesterday afternoon, our group drove through Milnthorpe, where John Taylor is generally thought to have been born in 1808. \u00a0We also visited the house in Beetham, near Milnthorpe, where his parents, James and Agnes Taylor ,lived and in which John grew up. \u00a0He emigrated to Canada in 1832, where, having been taught by Parley P. Pratt, he and his wife, Leonora Cannon Taylor, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> in 1836. \u00a0On 19 December 1838, he was ordained to the apostleship, and he was seriously wounded during the 27 June 1844 assault on the jail in Carthage, Illinois, in which Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered. \u00a0As president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles he became the leader of the Church in 1877, and he served as the overall Church president from 1880 until his death in 1887.<\/p>\n This morning, we attended the sacrament meeting of the Chorley Fourth Ward of the Preston England Stake, which meets in the large chapel within the complex that includes the England Missionary Training Centre and several other buildings \u2014 most prominent among them the Preston England Temple, which was dedicated in 1998. \u00a0I was pleased and excited to learn that there are imminent plans to commence the construction, on the large and undeveloped fields that also appertain to the Preston Temple grounds, of a large \u201cconcert hall\u201d that will host \u201cFor the Strength of Youth\u201d gatherings, performances of the so-called \u201cBritish Pageant\u201d and, most likely, other musical events and assemblies.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n After leaving the temple grounds, we did a multi-hour walking tour of Church historic sites in Preston, where the missionaries first arrived in 1837 and where the Church\u2019s oldest continuously functioning congregation meets. \u00a0Among other things, we walked down through Avenham Park, where an official memorial to the church pioneers is located in the Japanese Garden, to the River Ribble, where the earliest Latter-day Saint baptisms in England were performed. \u00a0 Amusingly, George D. Watt and Henry Clegg raced one another to be the first to receive the ordinance. \u00a0(Watt, younger than Clegg by twenty years, won the race.) \u00a0Having mastered nineteenth-century Pitman shorthand, George Watt went on to transcribe the speeches of Church leaders, eventually launching the Journal of Discourses<\/em>.<\/p>\n We visited the market square in Preston, where the earliest missionaries (including Orson Hyde and Heber C. Kimball) preached and the house on the corner of Fox Street and St. Wilfrid Street, not far away, where they first lodged.\u00a0 It\u2019s empty and derelict, but it\u2019s still standing \u2014 and if I had the money to do so I would buy it.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because there\u2019s a truly remarkable story behind it \u2014 see Peter Fagg\u2019s article \u201cA Satanic Attack on the First Missionaries in Preston, England\u201d<\/a> \u2014 and because I\u2019m afraid that it will be demolished if somebody doesn\u2019t step in to save it fairly soon. \u00a0The young Gordon B. Hinckley also preached in Preston\u2019s market square, and we visited the house in which he was living when, deeply discouraged, he wrote to his father that he was wasting his time and his father\u2019s money and that he should just come home. \u00a0His father\u2019s response was that he should forget about himself and get to work. \u00a0President Hinckley later described that as a pivotal moment in his life. \u00a0(Please remind me to pass on an analogous story that we were told today about very late in his life.)<\/p>\n We then drove up the Ribble Valley, through the town of Chatburn to the village of Downham.\u00a0 Elder Kimball was told to bother with neither village, because the people in them were irreligious and godless.\u00a0 He went anyway and had phenomenal success. \u00a0We went into the Anglican chapel that stands at the top of the village of Downham for some brief remarks from Kris Frederickson about the history of Protestantism in England, with an emphasis on George Fox and Quakerism (for reasons related to nearby Pendle Hill). \u00a0While she was speaking, Lt. Col. The Hon. Ralph Christopher Assheton (pronounced like Ashton<\/em>) slipped in at the back of the church. \u00a0He is the heir apparent to his 95-year-old father, Ralph John Assheton, 2nd Baron Clitheroe (aka \u201cLord Clitheroe\u201d); the Assheton family has owned the entirety of Downham and the surrounding fields and farms since 1558. \u00a0Seeing our motor coach parked on the street and assuming correctly that we were a group of visiting Latter-day Saints, he had come over to welcome us. \u00a0A very pleasant chap, one might say. \u00a0Very friendly and kind. \u00a0I had never previously met any of the Assheton family, so this was something of a treat.<\/p>\n We also visited what has come to be called \u201cElder Holland\u2019s oak.\u201d \u00a0It\u2019s a tree at the end of Downham, a little bit of a walk uphill from the road, to which, as a member of the Seventy and as the then area president for Great Britain, \u00a0Elder Jeffrey R. Holland would repair whenever he wanted to consider and to pray about a challenging issue. \u00a0It was at \u201cElder Holland\u2019s Oak\u201d that, he has said, he received a strong answer as to the location of what is now the Preston England Temple. \u00a0A large stone block has now been placed near the tree with the approval of the Asshetons (who, on the whole, have preferred not to have monuments or signs or markers in the village). \u00a0It will eventually bear a plaque telling the story of his experience there with regard to the temple. \u00a0My wife suggested that she take a picture of our group standing in front of the tree and that we send it to Elder Holland as a token of affection. \u00a0Great idea. \u00a0He has been kind to us over the years.<\/p>\n<\/a>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>