Church of St John Newland

St John's Church, Newland — known simply as St John Newland — is an Anglican evangelical church in the parish of Newland in Kingston upon Hull, standing on Beverley Road in what was once a hamlet north of the city. Its story spans nearly two centuries of Hull's evangelical tradition, from a Georgian philanthropist's subscription chapel to one of the most dramatic congregational episodes in the modern Church of England.

The church owes its existence to Avison Terry, a leading evangelical layman and prominent citizen of Hull, who served twice as mayor of the city, in 1827 and 1829, and once as Sheriff, in 1813. He raised public subscriptions to build a church close to his own home at Newland Grove, at a cost of £1,650, and the church was consecrated by the Archbishop of York on 23 September 1833. The original building was a simple box with a balcony at the rear, holding a congregation of around 500 — roughly the entire population of the locality at the time, though average attendance ran closer to 100.

In its early decades St John's was a daughter church of St Mary's, Cottingham, with services held on Sunday afternoons to suit the ministers' schedules. Terry found the arrangement unsatisfactory and set about raising further funds so that St John's could have a minister of its own. In October 1862 the Rev. John Pickford was selected by the Rev. Charles Overton of St Mary's, Cottingham, and in 1863 the vicarage was completed along with a parish school, both again funded by Terry's efforts. The founder died in 1866 and was buried in the vaults that then existed beneath the church; later alterations removed the vaults, and his grave now lies in the churchyard close to the south side of the building.

The Victorian church took its present shape under the Rev. Joseph Malet Lambert, appointed vicar in 1881, who remained for thirty years. He added the chancel at the east end in 1893, and in 1902 oversaw more substantial works: the nave was extended westward, the balcony removed, and a north aisle added, divided from the nave by an arcade of six stone arches; the burials in the vaults were moved to the churchyard, the floor level lowered, and the tall narrow windows replaced with wider arched designs. A crèche and office rooms were added at the west end in 1958, since when the exterior has changed little. The interior, however, was thoroughly reimagined in 2013, when the fixed pews were removed and the seating turned through ninety degrees, with a screen, projector, streaming cameras and a new sound system installed — the original architecture blended with the needs of 21st-century evangelical congregational life.

The church's recent history has been eventful. The Rev. Melvin Tinker, vicar from 1994 to 2020, was a founding member of the conservative evangelical group Reform and a prominent national voice for that constituency: he spoke out against gay pride events and the blessing of the 2015 York parade by a canon of York Minster, and after calling on John Sentamu, then Archbishop of York, to repent of supporting a ban on gay conversion therapy, he stopped the parish's voluntary donations — about £47,000 a year — to the Diocese of York. Under his ministry the church built connections with REACH South Africa, George Whitefield College in Cape Town, Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston, and the Lanier Theological Library in Texas, and identified as a member of GAFCON. By 2020 the congregation numbered over 500, including 100 children, with a leadership team that included two associate ministers, the Rev. Scott McKay and the Rev. Peter Birnie.

In August 2020 Tinker resigned and retired from the Church of England — and most of the congregation went with him. A network of independent Anglican churches, "Christ Church Network" Hull, was formed out of the St John's congregations under the senior leadership of Scott McKay, with Christ Church Newland and Christ Church Riverside subsequently joining the Anglican Mission in England. It was one of the most significant congregational secessions from the Church of England in recent years.

St John's itself carried on. A weekly service was restarted on 4 October 2020 under the interim vicar, the Rev. Canon Erik Wilson. Richard White was licensed as vicar on 28 June 2021, serving until August 2024, when he left to become Rector of the St Aldhelm Benefice in Purbeck. In 2025 the Rev. Jacob Madin, Multiply Minister of Scarborough St Mary with Holy Apostles, was appointed vicar and collated by the Bishop of Hull on Tuesday 6 May, serving alongside his wife, the Rev. Hannah Madin. Avison Terry's subscription church thus enters its third century as it began — an evangelical Anglican congregation on Beverley Road, rebuilding once more.