The former Castle End Mission and Working Men’s Institute, now home to the Cambridge Chinese Christian Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
Patrick Comerford
One of the churches I visited during my visits to Cambridge this month is the Cambridge Chinese Christian Church, which has been housed since in the former Castle End Mission and Working Men’s Institute, on the corner of Pound Hill and Saint Peter’s Street.
This former mission was also the home of the Eastern Region Ministry Course from 1997 to 2006, when it was known as the East Anglian Ministerial Training Course and then the Eastern Region Ministry Course.
The mission was founded 140 years ago on 12 January 1884 as an educational centre, and from an early date was connected with the Congregational Church, later the United Reformed Church.
The mission was founded by Frances Whibley, the wife of a local businessman, Mark Whibley. The couple lived at Hurst on Milton Road, and Frances Whibley started the Castle End Men’s Morning School in a cottage in Kettle’s Yard.
Frances Whibley was a founding member of the Victoria Road Congregational Church and wanted to provide for the religious and educational needs of the poor. By 1884, she had sufficient funds to build the Mission Hall. Undergraduates helped her with the teaching.
The foundation stone of Castle End Mission and Working Men’s Institute was laid by Professor James Stuart in 1884 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The mission and institute building was built in 1884. It is a two-storey building, built in red brick with limestone banding and with a concrete pantile roof. The foundation stone was laid by Professor James Stuart (1843-1913) of Trinity College Cambridge on 6 March 1884.
James Stuart was Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics at Cambridge University from 1875 and was interested in popularising scientific topics and published several books on the subject. He was the Liberal MP for Hackney from 1884 and for Hoxton from 1885 to 1900, and for Sunderland in 1906-1910. Vanity Fair described him as is ‘a wicked Radical, whom the Water Companies hate’.
As a memorial to him in 1915, his wife and sisters-in-law erected Stuart Court, a block of 22 flats, to rehouse families made homeless by a flood in Norwich in 1912.
The Castle End Mission was built in an area that was one of the most impoverished in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
At the time, Castle End was one of the most impoverished areas in Cambridge. It had a reputation as rough area, known for its drunkards and prostitutes, with an abundance of public houses. But it was also a closely-knit working class community, with high levels of unemployment and poverty. It has been described as a village within a town popularly known as ‘The Borough’ – the Burh or fortified place – and any boy born within its boundaries was known as a Borough Boy.
The mission hall was run by members of the Emmanuel Congregational Church on Trumpington Street with the help of undergraduates, among them Own Seaman, later the editor of Punch.
In addition to religious services, classes were arranged, clubs were formed, and, in bad winters, a soup kitchen was opened. The mission was also used by local drama and music groups and religious fellowships.
The first wedding at Castle End Mission took place in 1939. At their wedding, Bert Harrison of Birmingham and Violet Cullom of 6 Darwin Drive were given a guard of honour formed by the ‘Mission Campaign girls’.
The Castle End Mission was the Cambridge home of the Eastern Region Ministry Course from 1997 to 2006 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The mission became home to the Eastern Region Ministry Course from 1997 to 2006, when it was known as the East Anglian Ministerial Training Course and then the Eastern Region Ministry Course.
The course was founded in 1979 as the East Anglian Ministerial Training Course when the Ely Training Scheme merged with the Norwich Ordination Course. Its founders wanted to establish a ‘theological college without walls’ to train ordinands for the dioceses of Ely, Norwich and St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, as well as candidates of the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church.
The course developed links with the Dioceses of Peterborough and Chelmsford as well as the Diocese in Europe in the early 1990s, and became a constituent part of the Cambridge Theological Federation in 1993.
The Hind Report in 2003 introduced many changes to theological education, and a larger Eastern Region was formed in 2005 to include the Diocese of St Albans.
As the training course for the new region, the Eastern Region Ministry Course was formed as an amalgamation of EAMTC with part of the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course, and partnership links were formed with the Diocesan Ministry Courses in Norwich and St Edmundsbury.
Over the course of seven years the responsibility for formation of ordinands became that of ERMC, leaving Reader and LLM training the responsibility of the dioceses. The reader and LLM training courses of the dioceses of Ely, Europe, St Edmundsbury, St Albans and Norwich work in close partnership with the ERMC but retain their separate identity.
As result of changes in their ministerial training policy, the United Reformed Church and the Methodist Church withdrew from regional training courses in 2006 and 2014, and more recently the Diocese of Chelmsford formed a new partnership with Saint Mellitus College. Despite these changes ERMC, maintain its ecumenical dimension.
The course established a full-time non-residential pathway to ordination in 2016, with its first context hub in Bedford, which later moved to Cambridge.
The Revd Dr Malory Makower, the first principal of EAMTC, was a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He was also Priest-in-Charge of Lode, Cambridgeshire, and the course was located in his spacious vicarage there. When the Revd John Kemp was appointed the first full-time principal in 1984, EAMTC moved to Cambridge and has been located there ever since.
For its first few years in Cambridge, EAMTC had its offices in Westcott House, and then from 1997 to 2006 it was located in the Castle End Mission in Pound Hill. EAMTC moved from the Castle End Mission to offices in Wesley House on Jesus Lane in 2006, when the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies was also based there.
Wesley House underwent large scale refurbishment in 2014, and the course moved again, this time to Westcott House, across the street on Jesus Lane. The Revd Alexander Jensen, a former colleague in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, was appointed Principal in 2016. A year later, in 2017, the course moved to its present offices at Westminster College, Cambridge.
Meanwhile, the Castle End Mission closed in 2014, the trust decided to put the building on the market in 2016, and the sale was completed on 2018. The mission was wound up in 2019, and its funds were distributed between a number of churches in Cambridge, including Saint Giles’ Parish (Church of England), Cambridge Methodist Circuit, Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church and Downing Place United Reformed Church.
Today, the former mission on Pound Hill is the home of Cambridge Chinese Christian Church. The church was founded in 1997 and Sunday services are at 10 am (Cantonese) and 2 pm (Mandarin).
The Cambridge Chinese Christian Church was formed in 1997 and moved to Castle End in 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
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