Giant People:
S Parkes Cadman
Samuel Parkes Cadman was one of the foremost Congregational ministers of the early twentieth century and a North American broadcasting pioneer. A Doctor of divinity, writer and radio pastor, his programmes and columns were heard and read by many millions across the United States in the 1920s and ‘30s. A leading Christian thinker, he was the author of numerous books on theology and a biographer of other prominent figures including Charles Darwin and John Wesley.
The Wellington Connection
Cadman was born in the shadow of The Wrekin in December 1864, in an area of the neighbouring industrial community of Ketley that lay within Wellington parish. While is childhood was very much centred on the east Shropshire coalfield (where he worked in collieries from the age of eleven), his strong evangelical upbringing in the Methodist faith brought him into the orbit of the non-conformist tradition for which the town had become well-known. The oratory skills and scholarly approach to the Bible Cadman honed as a child were recognised by John Bayley, the founder of Wrekin College, who had previously been his headmaster at nearby Constitution Hill Board School.
Why Is It Important
Bayley would later help realise Cadman’s dream of becoming a church minister, sponsoring his path through the Wesleyan Theological College at Richmond, where he would make the connections that took him to the United States in 1890. Eventually, Cadman’s ministering would lead him to the streets of New York and his profound impact there would establish a reputation that brought increasing fame. He is remembered today in Brooklyn in the names of both Cadman Plaza and Cadman Plaza Park.
Giant Steps
Part of the former Constitution Hill Board School, which is situated just a stone’s throw from Wellington railway station, survives today as a masonic lodge. Cadman did not forget his east Shropshire roots after he emigrated and diligently returned to the county every summer until his untimely death from peritonitis in 1936. After the outbreak of the First World War, for instance, he preached at Wellington Primitive Methodist Chapel in Tan Bank (now a mosque) and regularly took to the pulpit at the long-demolished King Street Baptist Church.
Giant Steps
Part of the former Constitution Hill Board School, which is situated just a stone’s throw from Wellington railway station, survives today as a masonic lodge. Cadman did not forget his east Shropshire roots after he emigrated and diligently returned to the county every summer until his untimely death from peritonitis in 1936. After the outbreak of the First World War, for instance, he preached at Wellington Primitive Methodist Chapel in Tan Bank (now a mosque) and regularly took to the pulpit at the long-demolished King Street Baptist Church.