Gipsy Smith Stone

I was pleased to find (almost by accident) the birthplace of Gipsy Rodney Smith, MBE, down in Epping Forest. A member of what would today be termed ‘the traveller community’, he was converted back in 1876 and, as the stone records, preached the gospel on five continents, leading many thousands to profess saving faith in Jesus Christ. The place of his second birth I think the more significant, which was the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Cambridge. Upon entering that place, he was dismissed by someone as ‘only a gipsy boy’, but he left as a royal saint and a redeemed child of God. That snob saw in him little of value, but the angels of heaven were rejoicing by the time he left, and did so many times again over the next decades.

Would that such men would again walk the lanes, forests and townd of this benighted land.

The stranger did not lodge in the street: but I opened my doors to the traveller. Job 31:32

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