The Glen Lynden Churches are located in the Baviaans River valley north of Bedford.

The Dutch Reformed Church (NG Church) Glen Lynden (Bedford) is the 19th oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and the sixth oldest in the present Synod of Eastern Cape. It was founded on 17 July 1829 in the Eastern Cape village of the same name, but the center of gravity of the congregation moved from 1891 to the town of Bedford, with Glen Lynden today only a suburb.

It is said that Glen Lynden’s history is the most complicated of all the NG congregations. The same applies to the daughter parish Adelaide.

In response to the government’s offer of farms on the Eastern frontier of the Cape Colony, Afrikaners and, in 1820, Scottish settlers settled along the Baviaans River. They named their temporary abode Glen Lynden. Because both Afrikaans and English speakers strongly desired their own congregation, in 1826 they petitioned the government for a pastor and church buildings. As a reaction to the favorable answer, on 5 January 1827 – the founding date of the congregation – a management committee was chosen for the nomination of a minister and the planning of the buildings.

The church was completed in 1828 and on 1 May 1829 the first minister, the Scottish Rev. John Pears, after whom Pearston was named, welcomed.

The plaque on the church reads “This church was built in 1828 by the government through the influence of Thomas Pringle for the Scottish Settlers and their Dutch neighbours. It became a Dutch Reformed church in 1829.”

Already in 1830, however, he exchanged the pulpit for a professorship in Cape Town. Discouraged by his bleak report on Glen Lynden, where he found it impossible to build a congregation with farmers who were not interested in the church, the government res. Alexander Welsh was sent as his successor only in 1833. He was also a minister from Scotland.

Even though there were lots of issues and internal politics between Glen Lynden, Bedford and Adelaide, a new church was inaugurated in 1874. The large church is still in use today.

The Plaque on the “new” church of the National Monuments Council reads: “This church was completed in 1873 and inaugurated in 1874 during the incumbency of the reverend Georg Wilhelm Stegman, a resident of Adelaide, third minister of the Glen Lynden Parish from 1859 to 1890. The building was put at the disposal of the Dutch Reformend Church of Africa in 1964.”