From the Millennial Star, 19 December 1935 –

The First Mormon Christmas in England

By Wendell J. Ashton

It was Christmas Day in Victorian Preston of Lancashire … Victorian because Her Majesty had only a few months before ascended the throne left vacant through the death of her uncle, William IV. The little cotton weaving center presented a quaint holiday picture, with its numerous chapel spires, forest of chimneys and rows of porchless, contiguous brick houses. The xylophone-like clank of the clogs on the cobbled streets seemed to blend with the melodic Yuletide peals of the church bells.

The scene in Preston on that wintry day of 1837 was the “Cock-pit,” so named because Lord Derby, the twelfth earl, had erected it 36 years before as an arena for a barbarous sport which today has become almost extinct. Since then, however, it had become the home of the Preston Temperance society. Already it was steeped in tradition. Within its walls the well-known word “teetotal” was coined in September, 1833. The expression was created by Richard “Dicky” Turner, a reformed drinker and member of the Society. In discussing the relative merits of moderation and total abstinence at the convention there, he drawled in his Lancashire brogue, “I’ll have nowt to do wi’ this moderation botheration pledge; I’ll be reet down out-and-out lee-tee-total for ever and ever!”

Into this same hall, situated as it was near the market place in the heart of the town, on that Christmas Day gathered three hundred Latter-day Saints. They came from a radius of thirty miles. They were assembling for the first conference of the British mission of the restored Church of Him whose birth the world on that day was commemorating. They came from branches in Preston, Walkerfold, Alston, Bedford, Eccleston. Wrightington, Hexton, Euxton Bath, Daubers Lane, Chorley, Whittle, Leyland Moss, Ribchester, Thornley, Clithero, Waddington, Downham, Barshe Lees, Askin, Hunter’s Hill, Stoney Gate Lane, Chatburn, Penwortham and other places. Although it had been only five months since the first Latter-day Saint sermon in Britain had been preached in Vauxhall in this same town, hundreds of Britons had joined the Church. The first baptisms had been performed the previous summer in the grass-banked River Ribble which wended its way only a short distance from the “Cockpit.” It was a time of rejoicing in the gas-lighted pit, where the seats were arranged in circles, each rising about a foot above the one in front. The cock-fighting area in the center, about 12 or 15 feet square, had been used by singers at the Latter-day Saint meetings, and the compartment where judges of the feathered sport once sat provided the pulpit.

Presiding at that Christmas Day gathering was Elder Heber C. Kimball, who has been called the “Father of the British Mission.” At that meeting Joseph Fielding, one of Elder Kimball’s companions on the first missionary voyage to Britain, was ordained an elder. One hundred little children were blessed at the meeting — what a fitting occasion on the day celebrating the birth of the “Babe in a Manger!” Furthermore, at that meeting the Word of Wisdom, which had been revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith four years before, was first publicly proclaimed in Britain. For those saints, it was a joyous Christmas indeed.

Of that first Mormon Christmas Day in Britain Heber C. Kimball wrote : “The Spirit of the Lord was with us ; and truly the hearts of the elders were rejoiced beyond measure when we contemplated the glorious work which had been done, and we had to exclaim, ‘ Blessed be the name of the Lord, who has crowned our labours with such success.'”

At Christmastide in 1935 the “Cockpit” is not with us — its walls tumbled down one day in June of 1884 and a cinema now stands over its remains. Heber C. Kimball has passed on and even all those children who were blessed at that first conference have gone on to another sphere. But the power that brought them together, that brightened their lives and opened the way for eternal life and exaltation is our priceless possession today. It is the Gospel of Him who was born in the humble manger in Bethlehem, of Him who died on Calvary and of Him who in this dispensation restored His Church never again to be taken away from the earth..