Two contrasting churches in Headington, Baptist and Catholic, illustrate church diversity in Oxford

Headington Baptist Church is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the present building this year, but the church dates back to early 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During my visits to Headington in Oxford last week, in between visits to the John Radcliffe Hospital, I visited a number of churches in the area, including Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston, Headington Baptist Church and Corpus Christi Catholic Church.

Headington Baptist Church is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the present building later this year. But the story of the congregation dates back to the early 19th century, when New Road Baptist Church in Oxford started one of its first ‘mission stations’ for dissenters in Old Headington. This means the Baptist Chapel was the first nonconformist chapel in Headington, until a Methodist chapel was built in Trinity Road, Quarry, in 1830.

Headington’s first purpose-built Baptist chapel opened 1836 in what is now a private house known as Croft Hall. Croft Hall stood on land owned by the Latimer family, then the lords of the Manor of Headington and the owners of Headington House, and the freehold was acquired in 1841.

The chapel acquired more land In 1875 to extend its burial ground. However, the chapel was no longer big enough by the end of the 19th century, and the Baptists built a new chapel in Old High Street in 1901.

The cottage to the south of the new chapel was demolished in 1916, and two years later the vacant plot was bought by the Baptist Chapel. Most of the male members of the congregation were then away at war, and women and children helped to clear the site to grow vegetables. The site was to remain a vegetable plot for 16 years.

After World War I, a war memorial organ by Martin & Coate of Oxford was installed in the church in 1920.

The chapel was extended for the first time In 1934 over part of the vegetable plot, and the rest of the plot was turned into a garden. The garden was lost In 1971 when the church was extended again, and the new enlarged church was used for another 23 years until 2004.

The old church was demolished in August 2004 and the first service in the new church took place 20 years ago, on Sunday 5 November 2006.

The Baptist Church continued to own the old chapel in the Croft until the mid-1970s. Initially it was used as a Sunday school, but this was closed in 1924 because the building had fallen into disrepair.

The Freemasons offered to refurbish the building in 1937 as part of a leasing arrangement, and the continued to use the building until 1944. After that, the Exclusive Brethren used the building, and it was then used by a carpet shop. Croft Hall was sold in 1976 and has been converted into a private house.

Corpus Christi Church on the corner of Margaret Road, was built in two phases, beginning 90 years ago in 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Corpus Christi Church on the corner of Margaret Road and Wharton Road in Headington was built in two stages in the 1930s and 1950s. The first Mass in Headington was said by Father Fabian of Greyfriars in 1932, and for about three years a Sunday Mass was celebrated at 9 am for a congregation of 30 to 40 in a café in New High Street.

Father William Flint had been sent to Headington by the Archbishop of Birmingham in November 1935 and Mass was celebrated for the first time in the new Parish Hall on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 12 June 1936. The construction of the church began that month.

Cardinal Arthur Hinsley (1865-1943), Archbishop of Westminster (1935-1943), laid the foundation stone on 1 October 1936. The first stage of the church – the east end – was blessed and opened on 18 February 1937 by Thomas Williams (1877-1946), Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham (1929-1946).

The church was designed by Gilbert Thomas Francis Gardner (1880-1955), who was an architect in Oxford for many years. His projects included the Oxford War Memorial (1921), Twinings shop, Oxford (1924), and shops and flats in Park End Street, Oxford (1925).

Corpus Christ Church in Headington was built in two phases: the east half was built in 1936-1937, and the second phase, the west half, was completed in 1953, although without the tower shown on the original plans. The break between the two parts can still be seen in the different coloured roof tiles and the different types of timber used for the woodblock floor.

The church is built with brick laid in English garden wall bond with a tiled roof and aluminium windows. The plan consists of a longitudinal aisleless nave with a narrower chancel, and a short west tower flanked by transepts. Above the moulded west doorway is a niche with a statue of Christ in Majesty.

The south elevation has gables over five of the central nave bays which project above the roofline. The central gable is wider, presumably due to the original porch below, which is now a niche with a Sacred Heart statue. The east end has a shallow curved extension of the early 1970s to the original blind east wall.

Inside, the church has a tunnel vaulted seven-bay nave. The lobby at the north-west was originally the baptistery, and retains its wrought-iron gates. The sanctuary is flanked by two side chapels. The stone altar, tabernacle stand and lectern date from the reordering in 1980. In the early 1970s, the east end was remodelled, with the addition In the 1970s of a curved dalle de verre window by Leslie Sheels, depicting the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

The north chapel has an icon of Mary Mother of God by the icon writer Alexander Gormatiuk of Moscow, installed in 2000. The south chapel has a copy of Michelangelo’s Pietà. Only the north side chapel retains its altar rails.

The Stations of the Cross (1985-1988) are circular reliefs in bronze by the Oxford sculptor Faith Tolkien (1928-2017), first wife of Christopher John Reuel Tolkien (1924-2020), a lecturer in New College, Oxford. Faith Tolkien’s bust of her father-in-law, JRR Tolkien, is in the English Faculty Library at Oxford University. Her other subjects include Iris Murdoch and CS Lewis.

When the church was refurbished in 2022/2023, the Oxford Preservation Society presented Corpus Christi Church with its 2023 Award for small projects.

• The Revd Ian McDonald is the Minister at Headington Baptist Church, where Sunday morning services begin at 10:30 am. Corpus Christi parish is part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham, and Canon Mervyn Tower is the parish priest. Sunday Masses are at 9 am, 11 am and 6:30 pm.

The first service in the new Headington Baptist Church was held on 5 November 2006 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to Oxford churches and chapels, visit here

Saint Paul’s Church, Cambridge, has moved from harsh criticism and divisive schism to being open to questions

Saint Paul’s Church on the corner of Hills Road and Saint Paul’s Road is less than a mile from the centre of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I often walk past Saint Paul’s Church on the corner of Hills Road and Saint Paul’s Road on my way between the train station and the centre of Cambridge. But I took some time to look at the church last week for the first time as I walking back to the train station after a day in Cambridge with a visiting friend from Ireland.

Saint Paul’s is a Grade II listed building less than a mile from the centre of Cambridge, and is known to all who are interested in the Gothic revival in church architecture because of the criticism it drew from AWN Pugin and the Cambridge Camden Society in The Ecclesiologist and because of its interesting links with the architects George Gilbert Scott and Temple Moore.

Saint Paul’s traces its origins to the mediaeval parish of Saint Andrew the Less on the Newmarket Road. This Augustinian community of Barnwell Priory took charge of the parish ca 1200, and the prior became the rector of the parish, with the right to receive its tithes, as well as its patron, with the right to appoint the clergy. In effect, the priors of Barnwell appointed vicars to look after ministry in the parish.

At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, the priory was dissolved in 1538 and the prior’s rights passed to the crown and were then sold on.

The present church owes its origins to the work in the 1840s of the Revd Charles Perry (1807-1891), later the first Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, who was the first Vicar of Saint Paul’s.

Charles Perry was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1835 when he bought the advowson of the living of Saint Andrew-the-Less, with the right to appoint the clergy. He has been described as a ‘stout evangelical clergyman, equally opposed to ritualistic and rationalistic tendencies.’

As part of his evangelistic work among the railway workers and tradesmen who were beginning to settle in the Newtown area of Cambridge, Perry established a mission hall on Hills Road that became Saint Paul’s. He secured a district of its own, and was licensed by the Bishop of Ely as its first ‘perpetual curate’.

The parish was formed out of Saint Andrew the Less, with the addition of some land to the west of Hills Road that had previously been part of the parish of Saint Andrew the Great, near the Market Square in the centre of Cambridge. In his history of Saint Paul’s, Gerald Bray describes how Saint Paul’s became a separate district in the parish of Saint Andrew-the-Less in 1842, and became a new parish in its own right in 1845.

Perry began introducing extensive reforms, commissioned a new church that would became the centre of a new parish and also built Christ Church on Newmarket Road to replace Saint Andrew the Less as the parish church in 1846.

Perry became the first Anglican Bishop of Melbourne in 1847 and spent 29 years in Australia. When he retired, he returned to England and became one of the founders of Ridley Hall, the evangelical Anglican theological college in Cambridge, and of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

Saint Paul’s Church, Cambridge, was designed by Ambrose Poynter and was heavily criticised by the Cambridge Camden Society, ‘The Ecclesiologist’ and AWN Pugin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Paul’s Church was designed by the architect Ambrose Poynter (1796-1886), a founding member of the Institute of British Architects. Poynter was born in London into a family of Huguenot origin. He worked with John Nash in 1814-1818, and then travelled through Italy, Sicily and the Ionian Islands (1819-1821).

Poynter lived in Paris between 1830 and 1832. Back in London, he began his own practice as an architect and became noted for his Palladian and Tudor Gothic fusion architecture. He was secretary of the Institute of British Architects in 1840, 1841, and 1844, and also its vice-president, and in the mid-1840s he became Professor of Fine Arts at King’s College London. When Poynter went blind, some of his commissions were taken over by William Burges.

Poynter designed three churches in Cambridge: Christ Church, Newmarket Road (1837-1839), Saint Paul’s, Hills Road (1841), and Saint Andrew the Great, Saint Andrew’s Street (1842-1843). The nave and the west tower of Saint Paul’s were built in 1841.

Saint Paul’s was criticised by the Cambridge Camden Society in the first issue of its journal, The Ecclesiologist (November 1841), in an attack that was supported by AWN Pugin. The Cambridge Camden Society was established in 1839 to study ‘ecclesiastical antiquities.’ The society published The Ecclesiologist from 1841 to 1868, arguing that architects should adopt a religious stance in their work.

The issue was withdrawn, but an offer then to review another of the Poynter churches was not conciliatory. Saint Paul’s had been called a ‘cheap church’, and in 1843 Saint Andrew’s was called ‘miserable and meagre’.

Historic England designates Saint Paul’s as a Grade II Listed Building, pointing to its historically significance as one of the new churches harshly criticised in the Ecclesiologist, ‘an important publication of the Gothic Revival but which possesses visual interest in its own right.’

Poynter intended the exterior of Saint Paul’s to be an interpretation of Great Saint Mary’s in the Market Place, Cambridge, but in brick. However, the Ecclesiologist vilified Poynter’s original design for not having a chancel, for its use of brick instead of stone, and for its unornamented, late 16th or early 17th century style. The design was criticised because its ‘style of architecture and plan of internal arrangement should have been after some approved ancient model.’

The critique was toned down in the second edition, following objections from senior church leaders to the first edition. Still, it said ‘there are many arrangements and details in this church which are on every other ground quite indefensible, even on the ground of cheapness. Such are the huge clock; the disproportionate octagonal turrets; the great four-centred belfry windows without cusping or mouldings; the figures 1841 in the spandrils of the clock; the square clerestory-windows; the enormous windows in the aisles; the mullions made to stand on the same plane as the wall; the square heads; the want of foliation; the jambs without mouldings; the graduated parapet of the nave; the thin mullions and tracery of the east windows; the difference between the supports of the western and the other galleries; the startling contrast of the red brick and the white quoins of dressed ashlar; the trellis-work of black bricks; and many other things which time forbids us to notice.’

Pugin reprinted the original critique in his Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture (1842-1843), and suggested it should be circulated as a warning to be ‘hung up in terrorem in every church-competing architect’s office.’ At the time, Pugin was working on Saint Andrew’s Church, a few steps further north along Hills Road, on the corner of Lensfield Road, and the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic church in Cambridge. A few years later, Pugin would play an important role in the restoration, decoration and furnishing of the mediaeval fabric of the chapel of Jesus College in 1846-1849.

The chancel and vestry of Saint Paul’s were added in 1864, perhaps by HG Elborne. The north and south transepts were added in 1893 to designs by the Tullamore-born architect Temple Lushington Moore (1856-1920). Despite later reordering and change, the interior of Saint Paul’s retains spatial interest and some fixtures of note, including the work in the 1890s by Temple Moore (1856-1920) and the stained glass windows.

Temple Moore also designed the east range and south part of Westcott House, Cambridge, in 1914 and was the architect of Pusey House, Oxford. His only son, Richard Temple Moore (1891-1918), was killed when the RMS Leinster was torpedoed and sunk off Dublin a mere month before the end of World War I.

Temple Moore has been described as ‘England’s leading ecclesiastical architect from the mid-Edwardian years’. The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner said that he was ‘always sensitive in his designs and often interesting.’ His designs reflect his Anglo-Catholic practice and values. His work can be seen across England; he is known for a series of fine Gothic Revival churches built about 1890 and 1917 and he also restored many churches and designed church fittings.

The stained glass windows in Saint Paul’s include: the chancel north window, after Holman Hunt, by Heaton, Butler and Bayne (1906); the south transept east window by Heaton, Butler and Bayne (1920); and the east window, ‘The Conversion of Saint Paul’, by Alfred Wilkinson (1960).

The World War II war memorial at Saint Paul’s Church, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Charles Perry was succeeded at Saint Paul’s from 1847 to 1860 by the Revd John Scott, a brother of the architect George Gilbert Scott. The former parsonage built in Saint Paul’s Road behind the church in 1853-1854 was designed by George Gilbert Scott for his brother and is now the Cambridge Muslim College.

Perry’s immediate successors were styled ‘perpetual curates’ but in 1891 Canon Henry Paine Stokes (1849-1931) became the first vicar (1891-1917). Stokes came from an Irish family and was a former chaplain and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He was President of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (1909-1911) and President of the Jewish Historical Society (1914-1916). He moved to Little Wilbraham in 1917, and died in 1931.

Meanwhile, the original parish was subdivided in the late 19th and early 20th century with the creation of Saint Barnabas (1888) and Saint Philip (1902).

The Revd Mark Ruston, who was a curate at Saint Paul’s in 1954-1955, later became the vicar of the Round Church (Holy Sepulchre) in the centre of Cambridge. There he developed a student ministry that continues to this day, though it is now located in the Saint Andrew the Great.

The Revd Herbert Moore Carson (1922-2003) was a controversial Vicar of Saint Paul’s in 1958 to 1964. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and was ordained in the Church of Ireland by the Bishop of Connor. He had two curacies in Belfast, then worked as the travelling secretary of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship and spent five years at Saint Michael and All Angels, Blackheath Park, from 1953. He moved to Cambridge in 1958 and was the Vicar of Saint Paul’s for almost seven years.

He resigned from Saint Paul’s in December 1964, and seceded from Anglicanism in 1965 because of misgivings about liturgy, establishment, bishops, and infant baptism. Subsequently, he was baptised as a believing adult with his wife Delphine. He assisted Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel London, and then became the minister of Hamilton Road Baptist Church, Bangor, Co Down, in 1967. He moved to Leicester in 1982 and was the minister of Knighton Evangelical Free Church until he retired in 1988.

When he left the Church of England, Carson split the congregation in the process. The damage caused by this was considerable but it was repaired to a degree by the Revd John Gwyn-Thomas, who had a popular ministry of preaching and counselling.

Saint Martin’s parish was also carved out of Saint Paul’s parish in 1961.

Canon Michael Robert Wedlake Farrer, Vicar in 1978-1992, was Rural Dean of Cambridge (1984-1989), a canon of Ely Cathedral (1988-1992), and senior chaplain to the Bishop of Ely (1992-1995). He died in 2018 at the age of 96.

The Revd Michael Shaun Beckett was the priest-in-charge and then vicar for over 30 years until he retired in 2021. He is the author of Gospel in Esther. In a foreword to the book, Stephen Sykes, a former Bishop of Ely, describes Saint Paul’s as a ‘parish church long noted for its attentiveness to the work of preaching’.

Saint Paul’s Church, Cambridge, hosts a variety of meals and runs an active community programme throughout the week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Paul’s Church was Listed Grade II in 1972. The interior became a multi-use space in 1996, designed by Freeland Rees-Roberts. Meeting rooms and porch were added 2012-2013.

The Revd Imogen Nay has been the vicar of Saint Paul’s since 2022. She has been the Rector of Saint Andrew’s, Rugby, and the Canon for Evangelism and Discipleship in Chelmsford Cathedral. The Revd Dr Becky Applin Warner is the self-supporting assistant curate.

Despite its background and its turbulent history into the second half of the 20th century, Saint Paul’s describes itself today as a church that travels with questions, not firm answers, that seeks to have healthy conversations, learning from the world around us, and open to the Spirit and new forms of truth. ‘This is the Anglican way: balancing Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We are guided in our searching through conversation with the Bible, the historic creeds and the traditions of the church’.

Each week, Saint Paul’s hosts a variety of meals and runs an active community programme, and also runs a Fairbite social supermarket.

‘We are a member of inclusive church and we try and make church an accessible and safe place for all. However, we know this is an ongoing journey, and we don't always get it right.’

• Sunday Services in Saint Paul’s are Holy Communion at 10:30 am and a variety of reflective services at 6 pm. The church is open Monday to Friday 10 to 4 pm.

The Revd Imogen Nay has been the vicar of Saint Paul’s since 2022 (Photograph: Saint Paul’s Parish website)

The former Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street remains one of the most engaging buildings in Cambridge

The former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse and built in 1890-1894 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Sidney Street in the centre of Cambridge takes its name from Sidney Sussex College, and runs from Bridge Street at its junction with Jesus Lane at the north-west end to Saint Andrew’s Street at the junction with Hobson Street at the south-east end, close to Christ’s College.

Apart from Sidney Sussex College, the notable buildings on this street include Holy Trinity Church, but the most engaging may be Lloyds Bank, built as Fosters’ Bank in 1890-1894. The bank was designed by the Victorian architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) in the Jacobethan style, with complex decoration.

The building is now the Cambridge University Branch of Lloyds TSB. It was built on an irregular site, at the corner of Sidney Street and Hobson Street, and close to the gatehouse of Christ’s College. The original name of Fosters’ Bank still survives over the doorway, a reminder of the Foster family I referred to yesterday, including George Edward Foster (1840-1906) who laid the foundation stone of nearby Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church in 1903.

Fosters’ Bank, a striking building in a mixture of the Jacobethan and Dutch Renaissance-style styles, was designed by Alfred Waterhousem who, financially speaking, was probably the most successful of all the Victorian architects. He is associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he worked in other styles too. He often used eclecticism in his buildings, and the styles he used occasionally included Tudor revival, Jacobethan and Italianate.

Waterhouse was born into a Quaker family, and his brothers were co-founders of the Price Waterhouse partnership that is now part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. At an early stage in his career he was strongly influenced by John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice (1849) and AWN Pugin’s Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

His best-known works include Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London, the Manchester Assize buildings, and Strangeways Prison. He designed many town halls, several hospitals, churches and chapels, such as the Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, banks, and university buildings in Cambridge, such as Girton College and the chapel in Gonville and Caius College, in Oxford, such as the Broad Street frontage and college dining hall in Balliol College, and in Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds.

The Congregational King’s Weigh House Chapel in Mayfair, which he designed in 1888, is now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London. His hospitals include being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London.

The clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance of the former Fosters’ Bank in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Waterhouse was commissioned to build a new bank in Cambridge by the Foster family who wanted a new location for their bank which had outgrown its original location in Trinity Street.

The builder was William Sindall; the structural steel work is by A Hanyside & Co; the stone carving, mainly around the doorway, on the clock tower and in the gables, is by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co; the faience is by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring is by JF Ebner and J Rust; the decorative ironwork and light fittings are by Hart Son Peard & Co; the lighting was by Belshaw & Co; and the clock in the tower was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell.

The building exudes the grandeur and confidence of banking in the late Victorian era. It was probably designed to make patrons of the bank feel wealthy and portant there – or to attract the wealthy and important to entrust their money with the bank. Today, many tourists photograph it believing it must be part of the university

Both the exterior and interior of the bank are impressive. The exterior has a stone ground floor with decorative banded stone and red brick covering the two upper floors and the gables. There is a clock tower on the right of the façade above the main entrance, and the lettering above the door still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’.

The clock tower with an ornate clock face gives some idea of the elaborate decoration inside. The main banking hall is octagonal in shape, high and light with a magnificent domed roof. The walls and ornate columns have faience decorations, the floor is of mosaic and there are colourful, glazed, ceramic tiles. A neo-Tudor extension was added in 1935.

The lettering above the main entrance still says ‘Fosters’ Bank’ above the door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The site of Fosters’ Bank at Nos 1 to 5 Sidney Street had once been the site of the Crown and Woolpack Inn, and until 1846 it had been the premises for the Philo-Union or Cambridge Literary Society, founded in 1826 for ‘the diffusion of general knowledge and the discussion of all subjects not of a theological nature’.

Fosters’ Bank was founded in 1804 by the Foster family, Cambridge corn millers, mainly to support their local milling workers. It was also known as the Cambridge & Cambridgeshire Bank.

The bank first opened in attractive premises in Trinity Street, Cambridge, in a building that was once the Turk’s Head coffee bar. Many of the bank’s customers were drawn from the local agricultural industry, and there were branches in St Ives (1830), St Neots (1830), Royston (1834), Ely (1835), Newmarket (1844), Bishop’s Stortford (1874), Littleport (1889), Saffron Walden (1901) and Wisbech.

By the end of the 19th century, Foster’s Bank had outgrown its Trinity Street premises and commissioned Waterhouse to design a magnificent new building. Fosters’ Bank was absorbed into the Capital and Counties Bank in 1904, which later became part of Lloyds Bank.

Both Ebenezer and Richard Foster were Mayors of Cambridge, as were their descendants Charles Finch Foster and Henry S Foster. The Foster family’s milling business continued until 1915. The Foster mill near Cambridge railway station has since been converted into luxury flats. Anstey Hall in Trumpington, once the home of the Foster family, is now a wedding venue.

Richard Foster was also the major backer of the Roman Baths, which were built in Jesus Lane. However, the baths were not a success and closed after less than a year. For many years it was the premises of the Pitt Club, the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club in Oxford. I could see the building from my rooms in Cloister Court in Sidney Sussex College when it had become Pizza Express, and it is now Kibou Japanese restaurant.

Fosters’ Bank on Sidney Street is close to both Sidney Sussex College (above) and Christ’s College (below) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A Baptist Church in central Cambridge, with a story that goes back more than 300 years to 1689 or earlier

Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, Cambridge, almost opposite Emmanuel College, was designed by George Baines and Reginald Palmer Baines and was built in 1903-1904 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

As I walking back through Cambridge last week, I stopped briefly outisde Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, almost opposite Emmanuel College, to learn about its history and architecture and to learn little more about the story of the Baptist presence in Cambridge.

The church, built in 1903-1904 at 40-43 Saint Andrew’s Street, replaced a previous chapel that had been built in 1836. But, as a plaque on the façade recalls, there has been a place of worship of some form on the site since 1689. The church predates the street from which it takes its name, has been led by a number of long-serving, distinguished ministers, and has its roots in the mid-17th century Puritans and dissenters.

During the Cromwellian era, the Puritans were triumphant in Cambridge and Anglican organisation had broken down. A report in 1649 showed that the parish of Saint Andrew the Less was the only one in Cambridge with a serving minister, although there were preachers at Great Saint Mary’s and Little Saint Mary’s.

The Independent congregations in Cambridge began to reorganise in the aftermath of the Caroline restoration in 1660, although evidence for those early meetings is sketchy. There are records of a meeting in a Widow Wilson’s house in Saint Andrew’s Street being broken up in 1665: the congregation escaped, but Wilson and the preacher, Thomas Dac, were caught and fined.

During the short-lived indulgence of Charles II in 1672, a licence was granted for a meeting house at Saint Andrew’s Hill or Hog Hill. Three years later, in 1675, there was a meeting in the house of Robert Wilson (1627-1710) in Saint Andrew’s parish. Wilson was a music teacher and one of the original trustees of the new meeting house built on Hog Hill, now Downing Place, in 1687.

Other conventicles or dissenting meetings about that time met in Green Street, facing onto Sidney Sussex College, and Bridge Street, and there were several other smaller meetings. The labels Presbyterian, Anabaptist and Independent were used loosely in those days and at times were interchangeable.

Joseph Hussey became the first pastor of the Great Meeting on Hog Hill around 1691, when the church had 76 members and called itself Presbyterian. When the pastor advocated ‘a more democratic form of church government’ in 1694, the meeting became Congregational, and the Presbyterian minority seceded in 1696.

When Hussey retired in 1719, the church had a congregation of 1,600 and 150 members. A period of disputes and secessions followed, due to personal and economic differences rather than doctrinal disputes. About 100 of the poorer members left the congregation with Richard Davis as their minister in 1721, while the richer majority remained in possession of the building with a pastor named Throgmorton.

A similar schism took place in 1735, and harmony was only restored during the ministry of J Conder (1738-1754). An attempt at a union with the Stoneyard Baptists failed in 1766, and by 1767 the meeting had again dwindled to 100. It was revived by Joseph Saunders (1767-1788), an ally of Charles Simeon, who attended his afternoon services.

Towards the end of Saunders’s ministry, a new meeting-house was built on the old site in Downing Place. Its windows were broken by rioters in 1792. The membership dwindled to 50 or so, partly because the Stoneyard Chapel had become more attractive under Robert Hall. After almost 200 years, the Downing Place chapel closed in 1874, and it was replaced by Emmanuel Church in Trumpington Street, opposite Pembroke College.

A plaque dates Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church in Cambridge back to 1689 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Meanwhile, the second migration from the Hog Hill meeting had led to the foundation of a Baptist community. The 100 poorer members who left in 1721 with Richard Davis as their leader rented a stable and granary in the Stoneyard, next to Hobson’s Spinning House on Saint Andrew’s Street, and formed their own meeting with over 130 members.

There were secessions in 1723 and 1725, reflecting divisions over the question of infant baptism. The seceders of 1725 returned in 1727, and there was a temporary recovery, but the meeting was almost extinct when the Revd Robert Robinson of Norwich accepted an invitation in 1759.

Robinson found the building ‘a damp, dark, cold, ruinous, contemptible hovel’ with a congregation of 34 people. But during his ministry, the Stoneyard meeting grew, the old buildings were pulled down in 1764 and they were replaced with a chapel that could seat 600 people.

Robinson was an inspiring preacher and a hymnwriter, and on Sunday evenings he could attract congregations of up to 200. He was a friend of Charles Simeon, despite their political differences, and of Joseph Priestley, and he made an eloquent but vain appeal for reunion with the Independents or Congregationalists of the Hog Hill meeting.

The Revd Robert Hall succeeded Robinson in 1791, and soon attracted such crowds that the chapel had to be enlarged to hold a congregation of more 800. In the early 19th century, village stations or local chapels were founded by the Saint Andrew’s Street Meeting at Coton and Barton, later chapels were founded in Mill Road, Arbury Road, East Road, Cherry Hinton and Cambridge Place, and the chapel was rebuilt in 1836 on the original site.

During the Great Famine in Ireland, one Sunday collection raised £236, ‘an enormous sum for a small place like this,’ and a second collection the following Sunday raised a further £264.

Charles Spurgeon, one of the most popular preachers of his day, preached in Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church twice, on 6 April and 8 August 1855.

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner says the church is ‘a good specimen’ of the work of G Baines and Son (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The early 19th century chapel was replaced by Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church which was built in 1903-1904 at 40-43 Saint Andrew’s Street, on the site of earlier 18th and 19th century chapels.

The foundation stone was laid on 6 May 1903 by George Edward Foster (1840-1906) of Fosters’ Bank, Sidney Street. The new church was designed by the architects George Baines (1851-1934) and his son Reginald Palmer Baines (1879-1960) of G Baines and Son, who specialised in early 20th-century nonconformist churches and chapels. According to the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner this is ‘a good specimen’ of their work.

The Baines practice designed the church in a Neo-Perpendicular Gothic style, blending in some subtle Art Nouveau details. The church has a flint-faced exterior with stone dressings. The original spire appears to have been taken down soon after the church was built.

The foundation stone was laid on 6 May 1903 by George Edward Foster of Fosters’ Bank, Sidney Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The interior retains side galleries and a prominent central oak pulpit that emphasises the traditional nonconformist focus on preaching.

The memorial window above and behind the choir stalls was erected to commemorate members of the congregation who died in World War I. The windows depict three figures from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, symbolising three aspects of the Christian life: the centre light represents Freedom and shows Christian being set free from his burden of sin and guilt at the foot of the Cross; on the left is Truth represented by Mr Valiant-for-Truth; and on the right, Faithful is praying. The images above show the vision of the Celestial City of God, with pilgrims moving towards it.

An additional plaque records those who died in World War II.

The pews were removed and replaced by chairs in 2011 to create a more versatile space.

Inside Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church, Cambridge

After what have been described as a couple of recent ‘bumps in the road’, the church became mistakenly known as a ‘difficult church’. In response, the Revd Steve Langford was appointed as interim minister with the task of preparing the church for the next long-term minister.

Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church became involved in a ministry to the homeless, and in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the church opened its kitchens and cooked up to 100 meals a day for people living in temporary accommodation and hostels. At the same time, the church moved online and it continues to run ‘hybrid’ services.

In 2021 the church entered a partnership with Cambridge Youth for Christ to redevelop part of the church centre, known as No 40, into a drop-in and well-being centre for young people. The church ‘stepped up’ again in 2022 when it opened the church centre for English language classes Ukrainian refugees.

Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church is between the Mandela House City Council building and the Regal Pub/Arts Cinema, close to Downing and Emmanuel Colleges. The Revd Simon Cragg has been the Senior Minister since March 2025. He is from Cambridge and studied at the London School of Theology. The Revd Chris Duffett is the ‘Artist-in-Residence’.

Sunday services begin at 10:45 am with a time of musical worship, prayers and a sermon. There is Communion on the first Sunday of every month.

Sunday services at Saint Andrew’s Street Baptist Church begin at 10:45 am (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A cloud hangs over the future of Oxfam’s oldest second-hand bookshop in Oxford

A cloud hangs over the Oxfam bookshop on St Giles and there are concerns about its future (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When villages lose their parish church and post office, when a town loses more of its local pubs, and when a city loses its bookshops, they lose something of their character, when a cathedral city and a university city loses its best second-hand bookshops it loses part of its soul.

Oxford University Press closed its bookshop on Broad Street initially with the Covid lockdown in March 2020 and then decided shut up shop in 2022. Its academic books are now stocked at Blackwell’s in Broad Street, with a dedicated display space for OUP books in the Norrington Room.

Dillons bookshop was based at William Baker House from 1987 until Waterstones took over the five-storey building on the corner of Broad Street and Cornmarket in 1998. But those premises closed recently and Waterstones have moved to Queen’s Street.

Blackwell’s apart, my favourite bookshop in Oxford is the Oxfam bookshop on the corner of St Giles and Pusey Street, close to Pusey House, St Cross College, Blackfriars and Regent’s Park College. It is in the heart of Oxford, across the street from Saint John’s College and the Lamb and Flag, close to the Ashmolean and a short five-minute from the bus station at Gloucester Green.

I went there earlier this week to browse through its shelves, and I was correct in knowing instinctively that it was there I could find a copy of a book I have bought, lent and lost many times, Stephen Verney’s Water into Wine.

When John Mortimer opened the Oxfam shop there in 1987, it was the first of Oxfam’s 76 specialist charity bookshops. Oxfam pays full rent for the shop to Regent’s Park College, but all the stock is donated, and it is run by 75 volunteers and one paid manager.

The shop at the corner of St Giles and Pusey Street is the oldest Oxfam bookshop (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The shop at St Giles is one of two Oxfam bookshops in Oxford, with another one at Turl Street. There is another Oxfam shop in the city centre at Broad Street, and there are Oxfam shops on Cowley Road in East Oxford and in Summertown.

But now a cloud hangs over the Oxfam bookshop on St Giles and there are concerns about its future. Oxford City Council has turned down an application by Regent’s Park College to convert the shop into its Middle Common Room (MCR), citing local regulations limiting city centre ground floor units to specific uses such as retail, culture, tourism and entertainment.

Oxfam says that at the moment it has no immediate plans to move, while Regent’s Park College is now reviewing its options in light of the council decision. The college says the proposed change of use of the building was intended ‘to provide a larger, fit-for-purpose MCR and dedicated postgraduate study space to meet the needs of its expanded postgraduate body’.

No 56 Saint Giles is the Oxfam bookshop, and the building is divided between the bookshop, which has been on the ground floor and in the basement since 1987, and student accommodation on the upstairs floors.

Regent’s Park College owns many of the buildings on St Giles from the corner vwith Pusey Street (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Regent’s Park College applied for a change-of-use, claiming the building is not in the city centre as officially defined and that college activities would not ‘lead to detrimental effects’ such as artificial lighting and construction, or ‘impact upon the significance of the heritage asset’.

In rejecting the application, Oxford City Council does not dispute that it is unlikely that ‘any harm would arise from the change of use itself’. But it notes too that the site is, in fact, part of the city centre area by the standards of the Oxford Local Plan 2036.

In their objections, members of the public said the change of use would have an ‘effect on character of area’ and the loss of a community asset. Many objectors expressed fears of ‘noise and disturbance’ and difficulties with access.

No 56 is a large corner building facing onto St Giles and Pusey Street. It was built ca 1800, and is a Grade II listed building. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, George Bridges lived there and ran a grocer’s shop. It was then sold on to families named Nalder, Louch, Cook and Chandler, and the WH Chandler ran both a grocer’s shop and a private hotel upstairs. For almost 20 years, from 1958 to 1976, it was a Wimpy Bar.

Regent’s Park College traces its story back to a time when ‘Dissenters’ or ‘Nonconformists’, including Baptists, could not take degrees at Oxford or Cambridge. A Baptist Education Society was formed in 1752, and another in 1804, to provide education for Baptist ministers. They led to formation of Stepney Academy in the East End of London in 1810; by the mid-19th century, the college was part of London University, in 1856 the college moved into property in Regent’s Park and became Regent’s Park College.

After World War I, the college began looking for a new home outside London, and it almost moved to Cambridge in 1922. But those plans fell through, and five years later the current site in Oxford was bought, along houses, gardens, cottages and garages. The college was given the status of a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) in 1957. Training Baptist ministers remains a central part of its life.

The present MCR at Regent’s Park College was established in 2005, when the college had a graduate community of only 30 members. It is underground in a former storage basement with no windows, and there has been a five-fold expansion in the graduate student body over the past two decades, so that the college believes the current MCR is ‘wholly unsuitable’.

The rejection of the application comes after Jesus College successfully converted the former Burger King on Cornmarket Street into student accommodation last year (2025). Other colleges with plans for new developments include Magdalen College, which plans to demolish a 1960s building to provide more student housing.

Regent’s Park College is turning the Grade II*-listed fellow’s house at 53-54 St Giles into offices (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Next door to the Oxfam bookshop, No 55 St Giles probably dates from the late 18th century. It is Grade II listed and in recent years it has been the Principal’s Lodgings of Regent’s Park College. No 55 has been part of Regent’s Park College since 1928, and the college principal, Henry Wheeler Robinson, was living there in 1939.

The heraldic arms of the college over the doorway include a red cross, an open Bible with pages inscribed with the words ‘Dominus Jesus’, a fish representing the Ichthus symbol, and the motto, Omnia Probate Quod Bonum Tenete, ‘Test everything; hold fast to what is good’ (I Thessalonians 5: 21).

Regent’s Park College is also turning the Grade II*-listed fellow’s house at 53-54 St Giles into offices. This was built as a single house, probably in the 16th century, but was subdivided into two houses from 1772 to 1866. The passageway to the north of the right-hand house runs down into what used to be Drewett’s Yard, S ix terraced cottages there were demolished in 1939 when Regent’s Park College was built on Pusey Street.

The Revd Leonard Herbert Brockington (1906-1978), Senior Lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac in the University of Oxford and a tutor in Regent’s Park College, lived at the house in 1939. Regent’s Park College bought Nos 53-54 St Giles in 1956 and the Revd W Morris, the college bursar and senior tutor lived there. Regent’s Park College applied to alter No 53-54 in 2024, and applied last year (2025) to change its use from college accommodation to offices.

Further north along St Giles, the Eagle and Child at No 49 is still covered in cladding, fencing and scaffolding as work on its refurbishment continues slowly, and the latest reports say it is not expected to reopen before 2027.

Much of St Giles is already made up of institutional buildings, and the street probably needs more variety, including like shops, cafés and pubs. On the opposite side of the street, the Lamb and Flag, close to Saint John’s, Oxford’s wealthiest college, has been saved from threatened closure by vocal local activists.

Oxford is short of good places to buy good second-hand books, apart from Blackwell’s. The Oxfam shop on St Giles has been described in the Spectator as ‘a bastion of high-quality stock and knowledgeable staff who charge fair prices for the kind of tomes that you simply cannot find elsewhere in the city,’ where volunteers happily offer informed recommendations inspired by their own extensive reading.

It is ironic that this sad sequence of events is unfolding in the city that gave Oxfam its name. Oxfam was founded in 1942, when it began as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, to alleviate hunger during World War II. Today, Oxfam operates in 79 countries and there are 21 members in the Oxfam Confederation in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The closure of the Oxfam bookshop on St Giles would be another sad loss for booklovers in the City of Dreaming Spires.

the Eagle and Child at No 49 is still covered in cladding, fencing and scaffolding and is not expected to reopen before 2027 (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Short visits to three more churches in Dunstable, one Methodist and twoin the Baptist tradition

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was built in 1909 and is the third on the site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

My mains hopes in visiting Dunstable last week were to see Saint Peter’s Priory Church, the mediaeval Church of England parish church dating back to the foundation of an Augustinian Priory in the early 12th century, and Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, a listed building that typifies the approach of the architect Desmond Williams to sacred and liturgical space.

But there were other churches to see too, including the Methodist Church on High Street South, Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Marys Gate, and Christ Church, West Street, built as a Baptist chapel but now part of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was designed by GE Withers in 1909 and built in a ‘free Gothic’ style with a tall spire. The church is listed at Grade II because it illustrates the importance of Methodist worship in Dunstable in the early 20th century, for the quality of its design and for the completeness of the interior fittings including the gallery, bench pews and rostrum.

Methodists in Dunstable owe their origins to John Darley, a local carpenter and joiner who, when he was visiting Nottingham, went to the nearby market town of Bingham to hear John Wesley preach on 30 July 1770.

Wesley preached a powerful sermon resulting in John Darley’s conversion and he returned to Dunstable a changed man. Darley and others applied to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1797 for a license to register Thomas Summerfield’s house as a place of worship. Darley opened his own workshop in Church Street in 1812, inviting people to sing, pray and read the Bible.

The church is the third Methodist chapel on the site. The first Methodist chapel in Dunstable was built in 1831 but burned down in 1844 in an incendiary attack on adjoining farm buildings. It was rebuilt in 1845, and was enlarged in 1853, with an extra wing to accommodate 500 people, a Wesleyan day school at the back with 450 children attending on a regular basis, and a library.

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was designed by the architect George Edward Withers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Disaster struck again in September 1908 when the second chapel was also burned down. How this fire started remains unknown but there had been a number of incendiary outbreaks in the area that summer. The Methodists pushed on with plans for a new church on a grand scale, with a spire that would be seen for miles around.

The foundation stone of the third church was laid on 31 May 1909 and it opened in December 1909 with an overflowing congregation when the Revd Dr John Scott Lidgett preached.

George Edward Withers (1873-1945) of Withers and Meredith specialised in designing nonconformist chapels. He had designed Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church in 1905 when he was commissioned to design a new church in Dunstable. It opened in 1909 and the organ was installed in 1910.

The church is oriented from north-east to south-west and is roughly cruciform with a wide nave, with an offset tower at the north-east corner. The church is built of buff-coloured brick in English bond with Bath stone dressings and with plain tile roofs. It was built with a nave, galleried north and south aisles, a gallery that continues around the geographical east end, a rostrum at the geographical west end, with a gallery behind, and a ‘chancel’ at the geographical west.

The entrance at the east end is flanked by a squat north-east tower with embattled corner piers and a south-east tower with diagonal buttresses and an octagonal belfry steeple above. The east end has a large five-light window with reticulated tracery, a moulded four-centred arch and flanking four-centred arch lancets with buttresses rising between. The north and south elevations have gabled transepts and reticulated tracery in cambered arches.

Inside, there is an open timber roof structure. The interior still has its complete original set of pitch-pine furnishings, including galleries with tiered bench seating and benches in the transepts, aisles and nave. The walls are plastered. There is a four- centred domed arch above the ‘high’ end containing an organ loft and beneath it a rostrum and communion rail. The organ, installed in 1910, is flanked by lancet windows holding commemorative stained glass.

The transepts have four-bay four-centred arch arcades with slender polygonal piers with foliated capitals. The gallery cuts through the arcades and is curved around the east end.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, the Square Methodist Church continued to evolve as a place of witness and worship in the town. The church completed a building project in September 2009 that opened up the front of the church and improved access and the welcome area. The main hall at the rear has separate access and is used for community events, jumble sales, coffee mornings, a drama group and market traders on Saturdays.

Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Two other churches in Dunstable have roots in the Baptist tradition: Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Mary’s Gate and Christ Church, West Street.

Baptist roots in the Dunstable area date back to Kensworth in 1652. William Brittan, a local leader, who had oversight in 1694, was instrumental in forming the first Baptist communities by leading meetings in homes in Dunstable and Houghton. The Baptist movement in the Dunstable area has two distinct historical streams: Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate, formerly Saint Mary’s Street, and Christ Church on West Street.

Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate describes itself as ‘a Grace Baptist Church who believe the Bible’ and traces its origins back over 350 years to 17th century nonconformist groups in Kensworth and Thorn. It was part of the ‘Strict Baptist’ tradition in Dunstable with roots dating back to the early 1700s. This was known as the Old Baptist Church as it belonged to an older religious group known as the Particular Baptists.

A piece of land in Saint Mary’s Street was bought by the spiritual heirs of John Bumyan in 1708 to build a meeting house. The Bunyan Meeting House or Old Baptist Chapel was enlarged in 1807 to twice its original size and a Sunday School was founded. But it was demolished after a violent storm severely damaged the chapel in 1849.

The present church was built in 1849, with a capacity for 400 people. It has been Grade II listed as a rare and exceptionally preserved example of mid-19th century nonconformist architecture, complete with its original gallery, box pew, and pulpit.

The other church in the Baptist tradition Dunstable is the former Baptist Church or chapel on West Street, now known as Christ Church Dunstable. It was founded by the General Baptists and built in 1847 to seat 700 people and used as a church and pa art-time school.

The church was built in red brick and stucco with a central pediment. It has two storeys, three arched windows that are round headed on the first floor and segmental on the ground floor. There are quoins, a slightly recessed centre and windows recessed in panels. Three central doors, each two-fold with 10 panels, are flanked by pilasters under consoles, cornice hood.

The church also took over what was the Plume of Feathers pub, and has turned it into a community coffee shop and advice centre.

I missed seeing the United Reform Church in Edward Street, which was once a school hall attached to the Congregational Church, which stood next to it until the 1980s. In addition, the Salvation Army, which came to Dunstable in 1885, has a building on Bull Pond Lane, one of the oldest lanes in Dunstable. There are many other churches, church sites and former churches for me to see. Hopefully, though, the summer is long enough for that.

Christ Church, West Street, a former Baptist church in Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The City Temple, a church on Holborn Viaduct with a reputation for having radical preachers

The City Temple on Holborn Viaduct, which has sometimes been described as ‘the nonconformist cathedral’ in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

While I was visiting a number of churches in the Holborn area of London recently, including Saint Alban’s Church, Holborn, where I was attending an event hosted by both USPG and SPCK, and Saint Etheldreda’s Church on Ely Place, I stopped for a while also at the City Temple on Holborn Viaduct, which has sometimes been described as ‘the nonconformist cathedral’ in London.

The City Temple, beside Saint Andrew Holborn, should not be confused with the Temple Church, between Fleet Street and the Embankment, a mediaeval church known to many only because it features in both The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and the film based on the book.

The church in Holborn is part of the United Reformed Church and one of the oldest Congregational churches in London, with connections with the early Puritans of the mid 16th century. It is famous for its notable preachers, pastors and theologians, especially the Revd Leslie Weatherhead, who led the church from 1936 to 1960, but also Thomas Goodwin, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Joseph Parker, one of the great Victorian preachers.

The City Temple traces its story back to the Puritans and Calvinists of the 1560s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The first church building on the present site in Holborn was built in 1874, but the congregation was founded much earlier. The traditional date is 1640, when the church possibly started as a nonconformist, congregational church. But evidence suggests it was founded as early as the 1560s by Puritans and Calvinists who refused to conform to the Church of England, to use with the Book of Common Prayer and wanted freedom in their approach to worship.

Throughout its history, the congregation has worshipped in many buildings in London. Since 1874, it has met in its building on Holborn Viaduct, and for long claimed to be the only historic English Free Church in the City of London worshipping in its own building every Sunday.

The City Temple is widely believed to have been founded by Cromwell’s chaplain Thomas Goodwin around 1640. It is the oldest Nonconformist congregation in the City of London, and its first meeting house was on Anchor Lane.

The second minister was Thomas Harrison, who succeeded Goodwin in 1650, when the congregation moved to a meeting house in Lime Street. Harrison remained only until 1655 and a successor was not appointed until 1658, when Thomas Mallory became the pastor. Mallory led the congregation through a difficult period after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

The congregation moved several times until it found a more permanent home in the Poultry, Cheapside, in 1819.

When James Spence resigned as the pastor in 1867, the Poultry Chapel offered the position of pastor to Joseph Parker of Cavendish Street Chapel, Manchester, but he did not accept until 1869.

At the same time the congregation was planning to move from its site in Poultry, sold its site for £50,000, and the Poultry Chapel was closed on 16 June 1872. Parker insisted on finding a new site within the City of London and a new site was bought on Holborn Viaduct. Until the new church was ready, the congregation met in Cannon Street Hotel in the morning, in Exeter Hall in the evening, and in the Presbyterian Church, London Wall, for mid-day services on Thursdays.

The City Temple was designed by the architects Henry Francis Lockwood and William Mawson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The new church was designed by the Bradford architects Lockwood and Mason with an elegant, classical stone-clad façade onto Holborn Viaduct, with a prominent copper cupola-clad tower, providing a glowing beacon in the local community. The Doncaster-born architect Henry Francis Lockwood (1811-1878) and the Leeds-born architect William Mawson (1828-1889) also designed some of the most distinguished buildings in Bradford, including Saint George’s Hall (1851-1852), the Venetian Gothic Wool Exchange (1864-1867), and the Continental Gothic Revival City Hall (1869-1873). They also laid out and designed the mill, model town and church at Saltaire (1851-1876), all in an Italianate Classical style. At the time, Saltaire was one of the most important examples of a philanthropic industrial and housing development in the world.

The memorial stone of the new church, to be called the City Temple, was laid by Thomas Binney (1798-1874), popularly known as the ‘Archbishop of Nonconformity’, on 19 May 1873. The Corporation of the City of London presented a marble pulpit, and the new building was dedicated on 19 May 1874. Because of its location and size, the City Temple soon came to be seen as the nonconformist cathedral, and it became the most important Congregational pulpit in Britain, mainly due to Joseph Parker’s reputation.

As Parker grew older and his health declined, the Revd Reginald John Campbell (1867-1956), a Congregational minister in Brighton, was called as his assistant in 1902. But Parker died suddenly and Campbell became his successor from 1903 to 1915.

Parker had been theologically conservative, but Campbell was a socialist politically and a supporter of the Independent Labour Party, and his theology was as radical as his politics. He introduced Biblical criticism in his preaching, and questioned the traditional authorship of books and the origins of the text.

The theology of Campbell and his friends came to be known as the ‘New Theology’ and he answered his critics in a volume called The New Theology. But Campbell came to a crisis of faith when several New Theologians began to question the deity and even the historicity of Christ.

Campbell preached his last sermon in the City Temple in October 1915 and then resigned from the Congregational Church. A few days later, he was received into the Church of England by Bishop Charles Gore in Cuddesdon, and in October 1916 he was ordained as an Anglican priest. On joining the Church of England, he wrote an account of the development of his thinking in A Spiritual Pilgrimage (1916). He was the Canon Chancellor of Chichester Cathedral when he retired in 1946 at the age of 80. His funeral was conducted by Bishop George Bell.

Campbell’s successor at the City Temple, the Revd Dr Joseph Fort Newton (1880-1950), was an American who was almost as radical theologically. He was educated at the Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, and Harvard, and was a theological liberal. He had been asked to the City Temple at first as a temporary appointment after Campbell's resignation, but he was opposed by the deacons and the internal divisions that ensued led to the deacons being dismissed.

Newton asked for an assistant, and the assistant finally called was Maude Royden (1876-1956), an Anglican and radical pacifist. As a woman, she had been prohibited from preaching by the Church of England.

After World War I, Newton returned to the US in 1919 and in 1926 he was ordained a deacon and priest in the Episcopal Church. He was succeeded at the City Temple by FW Norwood, an Australian Baptist who remained until 1935.

Tthe Revd Leslie Weatherhead rebuilt the City Temple after World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

When Norwood left the City Temple, there were demands within the congregation for the appointment of a Congregationalist as pastor. In the event, however, the Revd Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1976), a Methodist minister then in Leeds, was appointed in 1936.

Weatherhead was a member of Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group from 1930 to 1939, and wrote several books reflecting the group’s values, including Discipleship and The Will of God. He was often seen as the ‘head’ of the Oxford Group in London.

The City Temple was destroyed by fire caused by German incendiary bombs during the Blitz. Weatherhead was able to continue his ministry thanks to the hospitality of a nearby Anglican church, Saint Sepulchre-without-Newgate.

Weatherhead raised the funds to rebuild the City Temple, which was redesigned by by Seely and Paget and reopened in 1958. The completed design included a new copper and sandstone clad concrete and steel-framed form, book-ended by the original surviving front and rear of the church. The City Temple has been a listed Grade II building since 1977.

Meanwhile, Despite opposition, Weatherhead was elected President of the Methodist Conference in 1955-1956. He retired in 1960 and died in 1976.

The present minister, the Revd Dr Rodney D Woods, was appointed in 2001.

The City Temple is currently completing work on a major redevelopment programme, and I was unable to visit the building, which is covered in hoarding and cladding as the work continues. Sunday services are currently taking place in the Chelsea Community Church on Edith Grove.

The City Temple is currently completing work on a major redevelopment programme (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Discovering more about cherries, TS Eliot’s cats and ‘Jolly Cricketers’ on two visits to Seer Green

The Jolly Cricketers is at the heart of Seer Green in the Chilterns in Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We were in Seer Green for the first of two funerals this week, the first in the village in the Chilterns and the second Lingwood in Norfolk. It was my second visit to Seer Green, and as well as Holy Trinity Church, we also visited the Jolly Cricketers, the village pub known widely for its collection of cricket memorabilia, and heard more about the associations of Seer Green with cherry picking in the past and its links with TS Eliot.

Seer Green is in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, about 3 km from both Beaconsfield and Chalfont St Giles, and has a population of about 2,400.

This was my second visit to Seer Green, and I was amused by some of the street signs and road names, including Longbottom and Bottom Lane. The welcome sign describes it as ‘Seer Green the Cherry Pie Village’, and until the early 20th century it known for its cherry orchards and its cherries sent by train to the market in Covent Garden.

In reality, though, the former orchards were a minor part of Seer Green’s landscape and even at their maximum extent it is estimated they covered about 8 ha (about 20 acres). But the remnants of some of these orchards and some individual cherry trees can still be seen, the local school holds a ‘Cherry Pie Fair’ each summer, and some house names and street names also reflect this part of Seer Green’s past.

The Seer part of the name may be Norman French or Middle English, meaning a dry place, although local legend likes to say says Seer refers to a visit by King Arthur’s court to the area when local people consulted his ‘seer’ Merlin. During the reign of Henry III in the 13th century it was called La Sere and similar names have since been used, including La Cere, Le Shere, La Zere, Sera and Sere. The present name has been in use since the end of the 18th century.

The wisteria-clad Jolly Cricketers describes itself as a ‘Quintessential English Pub’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

In pre-conquest days, the land belonged to Princess Godgifu. By the time the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, Seer Green was a part of Farnham Royal, governed by Bertram I de Verdun. Hall Place, a Grade II listed building, is the oldest building in Seer Green.

The land later passed from the Verdun family by descent and marriage through the Furnival, Neville and Talbot families. Francis Talbot (1500-1560), 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, exchanged Seer Green and the rest of the manor of Farnham with Henry VIII in 1541 and it became a royal holding. Sere Green belonged to Francis Godolphin in 1753, when the village had about 16 houses. The old Manor Farm is the site of Manor Farm Estate.

Holy Trinity Church, which was built on the village green in 1846, is a brick and flint building with lancet windows. However, Seer Green remained part of the parish of Farnham Royal until it became a separate parish in 1866.

But an earlier and continuous church presence in Seer Green has been provided by the Baptists, who first met in private homes and called their gatherings ‘Cottage Meetings’. When they formed a church in 1843, they moved into a building first used for a lacemaking school in 1829. The Baptists bought the building in 1857 and added a gallery for the choir and musicians. Meanwhile, the Methodists started services in Seer Green in 1840

At the Golden Jubilee of the founding of their church, the Baptists launched a fund to build a new church. The foundation stone was laid on 15 August 1899, and one of the stones was laid by Halford Mills, father of the circus proprietor Bertram Mills. The new chapel opened on Easter Monday 1900.

Seer Green and Jordans railway station on the Chiltern Main Line between Beaconsfield and Gerrards Cross was originally called Beaconsfield Golf Club. The new railway cut through the estate and golf course of Colonel William du Pre of Wilton House, who negotiated for a railway station and a new golf clubhouse to be built at Seer Green. The stop was originally designed to serve the golf club, not Seer Green villagers, and initially there were two trains a day. The station name was later changed to reflect its place between Seer Green and Jordans.

Seer Green House in Longbottom, which has since been demolished, became a convalescent home for soldiers World War II. After the war, it was transformed into a finishing school for debutantes, including Princess Margarethe of Sweden.

The demolition of the Old Manor Farm and the building of new housing estates brought many changes that transformed the village. With these changes, the Baptists decided to build a new church at the heart of the housing estate – with a distinctive glass spire. The old chapel building, built in 1829, was transferred to Holy Trinity Church in 1982 and became the parish hall.

The Jolly Cricketers looks out on the former village green in Seer Green, now the site of Holy Trinity Church and churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Seer Green has two pubs, the Jolly Cricketers and the Three Horseshoe. A third pub at the Yew Tree in Orchard Road, closed in 1909.

The wisteria-clad Jolly Cricketers describes itself as a ‘Quintessential English Pub’ and has been a central part of life in Seer Green since 1831. Before Holy Trinity Church was built, it faced onto the village green, and its name indicates cricket was originally played on the Green, although it appears to have been too small for a full-sized cricket pitch.

The Jolly Cricketers was built as the Cricketers and was run by the Cyster family for about 160 years. Since 2008, it has been run by villagers Chris and Amanda Lillitou.

Today, the Jolly Cricketers is famous for its extensive collection of cricket memorabilia, adorning the walls and ceiling, including signed bats, photographs, books and other souvenirs from professional and local players.

The Jolly Cricketers’ collection of cricket memorabilia includes signed bats, photographs, books and souvenirs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Seer Green’s residents in the past have included the author Frederick Forsyth and the weather presenter Ian McCaskill. The poet Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968) built Broom House at the corner of Longbottom and Bottom Lane, where regular visitors included the composers Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc, the sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and the poet TS Eliot.

Read founded the journal Arts & Letters with Frank Rutter, one of the first literary periodicals to publish work by Eliot, and it was through Read’s influence that the Morley family moved to Seer Green. Frank Morley (1899-1980) was a director at Faber & Faber and his colleague and friend TS Eliot visited Read at Broom House and the Morley family in Seer Green.

Eliot was the godfather of Frank Morley’s daughter, Susanna Morley. In his preface to Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Eliot dedicated the collection to her to a number of supportive friends.

As Susanna Smithson, she became a key figure in uncovering lost Eliot poems for BBC documentaries. She shared memories and intimate details of Eliot’s life and work, including his joy in his second marriage with Valerie Fletcher, and provided unique insights and personal materials, including photographs and letters, that offered more insights into the background of writing Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

As part of the BBC Two programme Arena: TS Eliot in the BBC Poetry Season in 2009, Susanna Smithson shared an unpublished 34-line poem ‘Cows’, showing Eliot’s hidden distaste for cows, their vacant gaze and aggressive curiosity. And Skimbleshanks in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is apparently based on a Seer Green station cat.

The Jolly Cricketers has an extensive collection of cricket memorabilia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)