The Keswick Convention’s repeated transformation
Philip Sowerbutts
Keswick has always been
about transformation.
The Convention’s founder
Thomas Dundas Harford-Battersby, Vicar of
St John’s Keswick, was a man troubled by a
lack of holiness in his own walk with God.
It was whilst on holiday on the Cumbrian
coast at Silloth that he was first introduced
to a new
teaching
that would
lead
to a
personal transformation by a work of God’s
Holy Spirit. In just three weeks, he and his
friend Robert Wilson organised their own
“Holiness Convention” in June 1875 using
a tent in the garden of Harford-Battersby’s
Keswick vicarage (see photo of the 150th
anniversary book cover). Hundreds attended,
and such was the success it was decided to
hold another the following year, and so it has
continued for 150 years.