Located in Basils Road, Stevenage. The Baptist Church was strong in North Hertfordshire after John Bunyan, who was a famous preacher and author at the time, held sermons in the area in outdoor locations like Wain Wood near Preston. A group of evangelical Baptists started to meet at the Lyric Hall in Stevenage in 1897. The number of people grew so quickly that a plot of land on the Basils Estate was bought in 1899 for £135 and in 1901 John Marnham paid for the building and the school room.
The church started with 10 members, 6 of whom were members of the Culpin family.. Mrs Culpin paid for the first organ, at a cost of £4. The Sunday School held there was popular, with 200 children attending by the end of the second year, and the church itself drew members from the Albert Street Strict Baptist Chapel, which closed in 1953.
Bunyan Baptist Church, together with three other churches in Hitchin, London and Stevenage, funded the building of another Baptist church in the new town, which opened in 1958 in Hydean Way. Continuing its tradition of church planting, in October 2006 together with members of St Nicholas Church, 20 members left to meet for worship at Round Diamond School, and in 2011 Great Ashby Community Church was recognised as independent.
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