St John the Evangelist

St John the Evangelist-in-the-East Golding Street

(formerly Grove Street or Low Grove Street) 1869 - 1943

THE CHURCH

When the Revd Joseph Marychurch Vaughan came as curate of the parish in 1865, his main task was to establish a church in the very poor area in the northern part of the parish, with a population of about 6,000. The church, with 500 sittings, was built on the cheap, at a cost of £3,500. The Bishop of London's Fund gave £1,500, the London Diocesan Church Building Society £300, the Incorporated Church Building Society £150 and Marshall's Charity £100; he had to find the rest. He was a freemason (a member of Royal Albert Lodge, and later of Asaph Lodge), and appealed for help in the Freemasons Magazine & Masonic Mirror of 1868:

iln1869

The new district of St. John, in the parish of St George-in-the-East, is situated on the borders of the London Docks, and has a poor population of 6,000 souls. Moved by a conviction of the very urgent spiritual need of the district, the working men (the bulk of whom are dock labourers, costermongers, and seafaring men) have formed themselves into a committee, and are going literally 'from house to house,' to obtain contributions to the Church Building Fund. It may be interesting to state further, that the children in the free schools have also united to help on the work, and that there are at the present time no less than 166 contributing 1/2d. a-week, while there are other labourers in the district who are obtaining contributions that vary from 1d. to 6d. a-week. For three years the missionary clergyman has carried on his work in a school-room and from house to house ; he has a Scripture-reader, a mission-woman, and a district nurse labouring with him—a free school (of which the Right Hon. the Earl of Shaftesbury is President), with 307 children on the books, and an average attendance of 117—a lending library, containing about 400 volumes of an interesting and instructive character—a penny bank, in which last year was deposited £54 9s. by 179 depositors—a soup kitchen for giving occasional dinners to the more sickly and destitute children, and for supplying the poor of the district with nutritious food during the winter months—a mother's meeting, average attendance 30—a sewing class three times a week for teaching the children to make articles of clothing for themselves—and penny readings, with the view of giving the working classes a pleasant and profitable evening, and to encourage in them a taste for intellectual pursuits. But while the above has been done, and these agencies for good are all in active operation, the committee feel that very much remains yet to be accomplished before the parochial system is thoroughly established among them. They are convinced that a church should be built; and that, when this is completed, they will then have secured for the 'labour of love' going on in their midst, that permanency which they so ardently desire.....

The Building and Working Men's Committees venture to make an earnest appeal to all who value the blessed privilege of a House consecrated to the service of prayer and praise, to assist them in the proposed work by contributing at least a shilling in postage stamps. Should, however, any be disposed to make a larger donation, cheques crossed "East London Bank" or Post-office Orders made payable at "Eastern District Post-office,'' Commercial-road, E. may be sent to the Incumbent designate, the Rev. J. M. Vaughan, 33, Nassau-place, Commercial-road, E. or will be thankfully acknowledged by any of the following gentlemen :— Rev. J. Cohen, M. A., Rесtor of St. Mary's, Whitechapel ; Mr. Henry Mosely, 9. St. George's-place, St. George-in-the-East; Rev. J. G. Pilkington, M.A., Clerical Secretary, Bishop of London's Fund, 46A Pall Mall; Rev. T. J. Rowsell. M.A., Chaplain to the Queen, Rector of St. Margaret's Lothbury; Rev. F. W. Russell, M.A., 35, St. Augustine-road, Camden-square, N.W. Contributors of 5s. and upwards will be presented with photograph of the new church.

sjteite The architects were the Francis brothers Frederick John (1818-96) and Horace (1821-94), whose practice was at 38 Upper Bedford Place, Bloomsbury; Messrs Dove were the builders. The foundation stone was laid by the Bishop of London on 29 April 1868, and he consecrated the church on 12 February 1869, with the Archbishop of Canterbury present. Mr Vaughan was inducted as the first vicar. [drawing above from the Illustrated London News 20 February 1869]

St John's was built of stock brick, with stone dressings, and consisted of a nave and aisles of five bays, the last bay of which formed the chancel. The construction of the east window suggested that a chancel extension was envisaged, but this never happened. At the south-west was the base of a tower which should have been completed with a belfry stage and a brick spire; this too was never finished, and a single bell was hung in a wooden frame on the top of the tower. Only the south side of the church was visible; it was surrounded by tenement houses.

The organ - 2 manuals, 15 speaking stops - was built by Gray and Davison in 1869, at a cost of £318. Vaughan stressed (no doubt with events at the parish church in mind) that he wanted to have a thoroughly good musical service, at the same time most carefully avoiding all extremes.

400commercialroad

As noted above, Vaughan initially lived at 33 Nassau Place, Commercial Road East, and later at 12 Commercial Place, but later the vicarage was established at 400 Commercial Road [left] - a house much later occupied by BISHOPS OF STEPNEY, including Trevor Huddleston CR and Jim Thompson. During the second world war it had been used as a hostel for bombed-out pensioners.

Near the church, in Christian Street, was London's tallest chimney at Martineau's sugar refinery which burnt down twice in the 19th century. On this site a large Board School was built in 1901. HERE is an account of Backchurch Lane, the western boundary of the parish, from the 19th century to the present day.

THE CLERGY

Joseph Marychurch Vaughan, the first incumbent, was one of nine children of a parson, John Vaughan (no relation to D.J. Vaughan's family at St Mark Whitechapel) and Elizabeth Marychurch; two of his brothers, and several other family members, were also ordained or married clergymen. After Cambridge, he trained at King's College London and served curacies in county Durham and Hove. He stayed at St John's for 16 years, ten of them as Vicar, leaving (as a contemporary commentator put it) for a lighter sphere of work, much needed after the long overstrain of mind and body, as vicar of St Thomas of Canterbury, Dodbrooke, in Devon. But he only stayed there a year, and for a further year as vicar of Englishcombe, near Bath, before returning to London in 1882 as vicar of St Nicholas Deptford, in Rochester diocese; in 1889 he went for a short time to Queensland, working in Townsville; and sadly in 1897 he fell into trouble over drinking and debts.

His successor in 1879 was George Thomas Cull Bennett (see Charles Booth archive B222 pp20-35). He was a St Bees' trainee, and had been a curate in county Durham and incumbent of Kenley, near Shrewsbury (where he was involved in a court case over a mortgage). He was musical, and one of many Victorians who wrote music for Albert Lowe's harvest hymn Holy is the seed-time. He was a supporter of the Family Welfare Association, the CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY and the East London Nursing Society, and a regular attender at meetings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He remained here for thirty years; a widower, in January 1902 at the age of 61 he married Louisa Nelhams (aged 43) at St John's, with his long-serving curate Charles Reeder officiating.

The 1886 religious survey of London records attendances on 24 October of 98 in the morning, and 128 in the evening.

Curates

In 1865 Vaughan had advertised in The Ecclesiastical Gazette for a curate, at a stipend of £130 a year - 'views moderate, schoolroom services'.
Among those who served as curates were

Stanley Hamilton Hayes (1873-74) - ordained to an Irish curacy from Trinity College Dublin, after five further brief curacies he came here. He later became chaplain at the Westminster Workhouse in Poland Street, where he remained for many years.
David Nickerson (1875-76) was Canadian, and had served in three parishes in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; after his short time here, he became a Chaplain to the Forces, with postings in this country and abroad for 25 years before becoming vicar of Harlington, near Dunstable. He said at a conference that the best prospect for a Poor Law child was to draft him into the army or navy. He published The Origin of Thought (Kegan, Paul & Trench 1901), an introduction to philosophy in a light and popular manner, said one review, but with a misleadingly abstruse title. His son Major General William Henry Snyder Nickerson was a Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross for his service, as a lieutenant in the Royal Arrmy Medical Corps, to a wounded man at Wakkerstroom in the Boer War.
Edwin Theodore Lewis (1880-86), ordained in South Africa, and serving no less than twelve curacies, in London, Lincolnshire, the Isle of Wight and the north of Scotland before retiring to Bristol.
Henry John Frye (1883-87), born in Thaxted in 1851 (where his father Philemon was a bookseller), trained at Lichfield (founded in 1857), and in 1902 after six curacies became the chaplain of Shepton Mallet prison (built in 1625 and still in use, though it has been through many changes; in Frye's time the number of inmates was relatively low). He died in 1913.
Samuel Secretan (1884-??) is described as an 'Irishman and perpetual curate'! It is true that he had studied at Trinity College Dublin (winning the Hebrew Prize in 1854) - though he had also attended St John's College Cambridge - and also that he served at least eight brief curacies and never held a benefice up to his death in 1911. But he was from a French Huguenot family, some of whom achieved distinction (including Charles Secrétan, 1815-95, a Swiss philosopher of religion). Frederick Samuel Secretan, who may have been his father, was naturalised, became a member of Lloyd's and settled in Brecknockshire. For a time Samuel tried his hand as a schoolmaster, at Howden in Yorkshire; HERE is a caustic critique of a sermon he preached there and published.
Charles Clare Dawson Smith (1887-88) [later hyphenated as Dawson-Smith], was one of our few clergy to train at Chichester (which JOHN LOCKHART ROSS had helped to found fifty years earlier before he became Rector of St George-in-the-East). For over 30 years from 1897 he was Rector of Nash, near Stony Stratford (re-appearing briefly at St John's in 1910 to help out), where he put in a patent application for 'improvements in explosives for shot and other guns'. His son Lt Frank Dawson-Smith (an expert on British owls) was murdered by mutineering Somali soldiers of the King's African Rifles at Ramo in Jubaland on the Abyssinian border in 1920 - the story is told here - and was a 'communicator' in psychic sittings attended by his mother.
Daniel Radford (1887-92), a London graduate, ordained 23 years later in 1871; his seventh curacy, after which he became the last resident rector of Papworth St Agnes near Cambridge until 1916 (when it was joined to other parishes). He came under the influence of the English Church Union, and published a courteous 'eirenicon' in response to the evangelical Bishop Charles Perry, formerly of Melbourne, The Theology of Christian Ordinances (Rivingtons 1884) explaining why he had changed his views.
William Alexander England (1890-??) - from student days, at Jesus and Caius Colleges, Cambridge in the 1860s he had money problems, despite a life interest in the Stibbard estate in Norfolk, which he inherited when his father died in 1871 and mortgaged. He served curacies off and on in various places and became incumbent of Wyke Regis in Dorest, but was declared bankrupt in 1886; he died in Southend in 1912.
John Thomas Hughes (1890-98), who trained at St Bees.
Charles Reeder (1892-1902), also St Bees: St John's was his seventh of ten curacies before he became vicar of Clapton, near Peterborough in 1906
Andrew Weinstein (1890-93), a Jewish convert who subsequently worked in South Africa, Australia and the USA; he baptized a number of Jewish children and adults during his time at St John's - see more about him HERE.
William John Thorburn (1902-09) who had been chaplain at Madura in South India for six years and then for six months at Gascoyne in Western Australia, at a mission station established by a descendent of Charles Besley Gribble, the first minister of ST PAUL DOCK STREET, but he became ill and had to return home; after four further curacies, St John's was his last post and he retired to Oldham.

Hastings Leonard Langley (1909-19) saw St John's through the war years. He had trained at King's College and served two curacies before coming to be vicar of the parish.

When he left, Brian Edward Waud became priest in charge for a short time. He had been one of Fr Dolling's curates at the time of his death in 1902 at All Saints Poplar (where he started a boys' rowing club on the River Lea), after which he went briefly to Edinburgh; he had retired to St Mary's Clergy House in Cable Street. But the tradition of the parish was to change....

shrubbs The penultimate vicar (1919-39) was Henry Shrubbs. He trained at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and served two curacies locally before coming here. He was involved with the Church Army, and conducted some baptisms at their local headquarters. The parish magazine ('buses 15a, 23a and 40a, trams from Aldgate and Bloomsbury') proclaimed

Welcome to St John's
where the SERVICES are definitely Evangelical, Congregational and understandable,
where the Pure GOSPEL is preached
and where the SACRAMENTS are administered according to Apostolic simplicity
and The Order of the English Branch of the Church Catholic.
Come once - you will come always.

A similar stance was taken by Hyma Henry Redgrave, who had permission to officiate in the parish and lived in the Institute at 20 Christian Street from 1923-34. He was a Durham and King's College London graduate, and in his seventh post at St Paul Burslem set up a 'Cranmer Theological College' there, and was a protagonist for the establishment of Cranmer Hall, within St John's College Durham, as a 'Protestant Hostel', in 1909. In 1912 he had published The practical principles of Jesus: Being a practical precept for every day in the year, each precept being based on an express approval or disapproval of our Lord: with copious Scriptural references (a latter-day 'WWJD' approach!) After two more London posts, in 1937 he became the incumbent of Stow Bedon with Breccles, in Norfolk, before retiring to Hastings in 1949. His brother was the grandfather of the actor Sir Michael Regrave.

For a short time in 1935 Clifford John Nash was a curate here. He was a graduate of the evangelical Ridley College, Melbourne in Australia (from which he received a higher degree in absentia in 1944), and had served three curacies there (starting a scout troop in one parish). He came here under the terms of the 1874 Colonial Clergy Act, and lived at Pierhead House, Wapping. He returned home to become vicar of Christ Church Melton in 1937, and two years later published As in the Days of Noah: A Christian's Guide through World Chaos (Marshall Morgan & Scott).

Dudley James Milne Gray, a Durham graduate who trained at St Augustine's College Canterbury, was curate from 1935-37, following a three year spell as a missionary in China. He went on to build up a new congregation at St Luke Leagrave in Luton.

From 1937 Frank Anderson Moss Ellis is listed as curate, but it turned out that he had not in fact been canonically ordained!

Pictured are the interior of the church in the 1930s, and three views from 1938: the corner of Fairclough and Brunswick Streets; the Beehive public house on the corner of Fairclough and Christian Streets; and the corner of Christian and Ellen Streets.

In 1938 we find the Vicar appealing for £6,000 to replace the Institute. It had once been a pub, The Comet (he describes as a gin palace in Dickens' day). The brewery from which it was leased had been good landlords, spending more on repairs than they received in rent, and thousands have benefitted by the warm, hearty, high-toned hospitality...The building has seen rough times during the training and taming of Whitechapel youth, but it has sent out into life stalwart saints. But today the old building literally rocks under the weight of its human burden, and its sighs are heard in creaking floors and windows. What was now needed, he said, was a new building to house the social, educational, physical and religious organisations so necessary in such a congested parish as St John's. Hundreds of the youth hang about sordid gloomy streets and courts during the dark evenings, waiting for mischief and too often find it; when a bright Institute offering healthy scope for their ever-increasing lesiure hours would certainly draw a considerable proportion and thus save money from the pitfalls confronting them on every side.

Shrubbs' other problem, as he saw it, was the difficulty of keeping Sunday in what was then a Jewish-majority parish (there were several SYNAGOGUES close by, and HESSEL STREET MARKET), where Sunday is a busier day than the ordinary Saturday elsewhere - though he hoped that the 1936 Shops (Sunday Trading Restriction) Act, passed amidst controversy, would help matters. And he was cheered by a recent confirmation of 36 lads and maidens from the parish, whose preparation was not through orderly classes, as in the suburbs, but often started over frying bacon and eggs or kippers (one in the eye for his Jewish neighbours!) - decisions for Christ are come to under an alley lamp-post.

A few Muslims were also beginning to live in the parish. In the baptism registers for the 1930s are several children with Asian fathers and English mothers (for example, 'Asia, daughter of Mohammed and Mabel Ali'). This table shows the number of baptisms and weddings each year throughout the church's history. In the early part of the 20th century, there were often several weddings on Christmas Day.

	baptisms	weddings		baptisms	weddings		baptisms	weddings
1870	25	1	1895	94	58	1920	33	26
1871	76	5	1896	78	57	1921	30	23
1872	27	3	1897	72	49	1922	32	14
1873	114	2	1898	78	51	1923	27	18
1874	34	6	1899	54	59	1924	32	9
1875	46	2	1900	60	61	1925	33	18
1876	20	7	1901	46	41	1926	37	19
1877	15	6	1902	60	42	1927	30	22
1878	13	4	1903	58	42	1928	23	14
1879	28	25	1904	55	30	1929	23	18
1880	127	15	1905	42	57	1930	31	11
1881	107	26	1906	44	60	1931	24	9
1882	139	16	1907	42	47	1932	25	10
1883	114	21	1908	56	66	1933	25	9
1884	148	27	1909	55	76	1934	20	9
1885	171	18	1910	66	61	1935	32	21
1886	135	40	1911	38	64	1936	31	28
1887	128	34	1912	57	44	1937	40	17
1888	132	29	1913	42	48	1938	29	13
1889	131	53	1914	36	52	1939	25	10
1890	111	32	1915	42	64	1940	22	17
1891	99	57	1916	40	40	1941	12	5
1892	94	38	1917	18	8	1942	9	3
1893	84	48	1918	15	20	1943	3	2
1894	72	57	1919	17	17	1944		1
						1945		5

FINAL DAYS

sjeite In the event, the Second World War came. Henry Shrubbs left in 1939 for Stanstead Abbots, in St Alban's diocese, and in 1940 Hubert Alfred Robins became the last Vicar, having served two local curacies. He left in 1943 when local clergy were centred on St George-in-the-East, to become vicar of St Erkenwald, Southend, and then to two parishes in Devon (where he was briefly rural dean) before retiring to Cornwall in 1968.

When the church closed in 1943 it was used as a store for furnishings from bomb-damaged churches (the eventual disposal of these items, at the expense of the East End, makes an interesting story). By 1960 the building was in a terrible state; vandals had broken in and smashed all the furniture and wrecked most of the windows; even the stone pulpit was broken. The floor was littered with old hymnbooks and bibles, parish magazines and marble wall-monuments from St Peter Regent Square. Locals had dumped mouldering settees and chairs. The diocesan authorities had attempted to prevent entry by overturning the stone font against the main door, but to no avail. The building was demolished in 1964.

Regeneration for this part of the parish is promised, in the shape of a major scheme for the site of the former Bishop Challoner School, on which work has begun.

No Trees in the Street
A 1959 film, rated as sincere but saccharine, featuring Ronald Howard, Stanley Holloway, David Hemmings, Sylvia Sims, Melvyn Hayes and Herbert Lom: a retired policeman who shows a young criminal how a similar lad went astray twenty years previously. Some shots were filmed locally - on the left are stills of Hemmings and Howard outside the church entrance in Golding Street, and round the corner outside Delafield House and Drewett House in Burslem Street, anf on the right contemporary pictures (now with trees!) of these spots. notreesinthestreet5