Remembering Madelene Bathgate
1937 - 2026
“So began our great adventure together, for that’s what it truly has been.”
Madelene Bathgate wrote those words in 2007, marking her and husband Tom’s 50th wedding anniversary. Hers was an adventure that began in a Counties tent in Surrey, carried her from Scotland to Kent, and ended only when she went to be with the Lord she had loved and served all her life.
Tom and Madelene with their sons.
Converted to Christ as a teenager, Madelene recalled cycling ten miles from Woking with her friend Anne to a Counties meeting at Ash, led by evangelist Jim Bathgate. Returning the next evening, she first set eyes on Jim’s youngest brother Tom, down on holiday from Edinburgh. “From that day my heart was captured, it was truly love at first sight – for me,” she later wrote. “Unfortunately, he was short sighted or something and didn’t notice me, how very sad!” A year of daily letters followed, and they married at Tranent Gospel Hall, near Edinburgh, on 23 March 1957.
The couple set up home in Scotland joining Counties Evangelistic Work, before moving to Kent; from 1963 they lived in Twydall, raising sons Philip, Stephen and Andrew.
Madelene was never simply Tom’s companion in ministry but his equal partner, present at every mission and church engagement – a double act that was, in the words of Counties evangelists Jonathan and Heather Brain, “brilliant in marriage and in life.” When the tent missions ended, Tom preached across the south-east while Madelene led a girls’ club, ran the monthly Women’s Meeting Point, served for years at the Higham camps, and became Twydall’s much-loved ‘lollipop lady’.
At the Herne Bay conference Madelene was a fixture, good for a story starring Tom as the unwitting subject – “the Counties’ Bob Mortimer,” in Jonathan and Heather Brain’s words. Counties CEO Martin Erwin still retells one, of a mouse in a canvas camp toilet and a startled Tom summoned to the rescue – one of several tales still told at her Thanksgiving Service.
Crossing children safely on Twydall Lane, she “knew all their names,” recalls neighbour Cheryl Baxter, “and the children would confide in her when they were worried or anxious.” Inita Jekabsone, her cleaner, remembers being welcomed with tea and sandwiches from her first visit: “God turned it out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life… Madelene invited me to Twydall Evangelical Church, and it’s become my family too.”
Even in her final months, Madelene’s faith and humour never left her, telling hospital nurses simply, “I’m praying for you.” At her Thanksgiving Service, the words of the apostle Paul from 2 Tim. 4:6-8 were read, fitting Madelene as much as they did: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
After Tom went to be with the Lord in 2020, Madelene continued to be listed among Counties’ Senior Evangelists, a quiet testimony to a calling never merely derivative of his. She was cared for throughout her illness by her sons Stephen and Andrew, described as “exceedingly caring and helpful… magnificent.”
Jonathan and Heather Brain speak for the whole Counties family: “The world is genuinely poorer. We were blessed to have known them and can’t wait to see them in glory before too long.”
Madelene is survived by her three sons, Philip, Stephen and Andrew, and their families, including grandchildren and great-grandchildren Naomi, Genna, Isla, Jamie, Luke, Freddie, Sidney, Kay, Mason, Bobby, Frankie, Jack and Georgina.
We give thanks to God for Madelene Bathgate: for her faith, her faithfulness, her laughter, and her love. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’