1

2

FOREWORD

It is a great privilege to stand as vicar of St Andrew’s, Fulham Fields, in succession to my many predecessors, who with the people of the church, have contributed so much for so long to the spiritual and material wellbeing of this parish.

The story which is told by Morgan Phillips in this history of St Andrew’s places the church at the heart of the vast changes that have taken place in West Kensington over the 150 years since its urbanisation. In that century and a half, the fields and market gardens of this part of Fulham have given way to streets of housing, schools and community buildings, shops and markets and everything that goes into the making of a lively and diverse neighbourhood.

Since the beginning it has been a story of both change and continuity and so it will always be. In the time of the first vicar, John Henry Cardwell, the world was changing rapidly for those who moved in their tens of thousands from rural to urban lives, from agriculture to industrial or other employment. Into the 20

th century, the world was again

to change profoundly under the impact of the First World War when Douglas Castleden was vicar. Through the years of the Depression, Ernest Nicholson was vicar, taking St Andrew’s through to the first years of the Second World War. The post war years of reconstruction and the beginnings of the Welfare State through to social changes of the 1960’s and 1970’s were the years of William Hepher as vicar. From then to the present day, further great changes in the composition of the population, the rise of the consumer society and growing differences in wealth and poverty, were all addressed by vicar and congregation together, ensuring that St Andrew’s continued to be an active sign of the unchanging presence and love of God in the midst of a changing world

It is a story not so much of the church as a building, although it is true that the visible impact of the church and its spire and the welcome that it has always provided, are a powerful physical landmark in the neighbourhood. More importantly, it is the story of human beings, clergy and lay people through the generations, whose continuing commitment to the wellbeing of the parish has been salt and yeast, giving flavour and vitality to every aspect of life.

The story in the book ends with the opening of the reordered church and the new Star Centre on 22

nd March 2012. But the story of St Andrew’s will go on chapter by chapter

into the future with the church continuing its God-given mission to be light in the parish.

Guy Wilkinson

June 2012

3

John Cardwell came to Fulham Fields in 1868

CHAPTER ONE

FROM MISSION TO PARISH CHURCH

In March 1868, just 15 months after his ordination, a 25 year old Yorkshireman the Revd. John Henry Cardwell was asked to establish a London Diocesan Home Mission in Fulham Fields, a thinly populated area of market gardens and smallholdings.

This was not Cardwell's first taste of London for he had been a curate in Clerkenwell, but he was shocked at the destitution and deprivation within his new district. Living conditions were medieval with unpaved roads and ineffective drains. The houses had muddy pools at the front door and open cesspits in the back yard. Unsurprisingly there was a reluctance to hand over any rent, and Cardwell witnessed families thrown out on the streets for non-payment. He also observed 'serious fights in the neighbourhood and the amount of drunkenness is very great.'

He began his mission by visiting people in their homes and by holding open-air services.

'After some weeks these services were pretty fairly attended and we were nearly free from the interruptions that we met at first,' he stoically reported.

Hearing that a local builder had plans for a stables in John Street (off Field Road) Cardwell persuaded him to put living accommodation on the ground floor and a small hall above. With a £600 grant from a generous supporter( Edmund Denny) he took over these premises in October 1868 to establish the St Andrew's Mission/School, large enough for 230 people. He led two services there every Sunday. The congregation numbered 60 or so in the morning, far more in the evening, but the combined collection could well be less than £1.

The Mission also provided a Mothers’ Meeting run by Mrs Cardwell, a penny bank, a sick & benefit society and daytime and evening education. £250 was raised for equipment, and regular subscribers agreed to meet the Mission's running costs. The Deller family, who owned a market farm nearby, typified the backing that Cardwell received from local smallholders and tradesmen. One shopkeeper admitted he would have abandoned Fulham 'but for the reforming influence over the children in the streets' and a builder testified that 'many who for years never have been to a church have regularly attended the Mission.

In 1870 Cardwell heard that a temporary iron church was on sale in Bayswater and for £228 he had it transported to Fulham and erected in May Street – which only existed as a Post Office address. This new church stood in open fields. The official opening on 24 November provided 'a hearty plain English church service without any apparent Ritualistic tendencies. The choir was composed of young men and women.'

Despite its iron walls the building was not impregnable. At 3.30 one Sunday morning PC Hacket challenged a man outside the church and found that he had stolen the communion cloth. The thief had left a cheeky note complaining that there was no cash on the premises: 'It is very strange you would not leave the money. Good night.'

4

Peregrine Propert appointed in April

1885

Rowland Cardwell appointed 1881

Burglars aside, Cardwell was making swift progress towards creating a new parish and building a permanent church. At his request Mrs Eliza Elliott put an advertisement in The Times, asking each reader to donate a penny stamp towards the construction. This provoked some hilarity but also brought St Andrew's widespread publicity as Cardwell had intended. Eliza was happy to play naïve; in reality she and her husband James ran a successful fine arts business.

Funding came from a variety of sources including one that stipulated 'that all the seats be for the free use of the Parishioners according to law, suitable provision being made for the use of the poorer inhabitants.' Cardwell and his wardens had no problem signing that undertaking.

On 14 June 1873 Bishop Jackson laid the foundation stone for a permanent church accommodating 750 worshippers. For its design the architects Newman and Billings chose the French 13

th Century style. If we could travel back in time to 25 July 1874 when

St Andrew's was consecrated we would find the outside quite familiar, but the interior plain and unfinished. The adornments came later. One exciting but usually unseen feature was Thomas Bartlett's 1623 Whitechapel Foundry bell, which had hung in St Martin's Outwich and survived the Great Fire of London in 1666.

On the 28th November 1874 Queen Victoria made an Order in Council, which allowed

the formation of St Andrew's parish from districts previously served by the Fulham churches of St John's and All Saints and by St Mary's West Kensington.

Cardwell, now officially Vicar of St Andrew's, continued to enlist wealthy and powerful men such as Dr Patrick Murdoch, founder of the Fulham Conservative Club, and John T Howland, whose local laundry employed hundreds of female workers. In 1883 Dr Murdoch agreed to be patron of the church's cricket and football club, little guessing that fifteen years later it would become the professional Fulham FC at Craven Cottage. Jack Howland, the laundryman's eldest son, was the football club's first captain; he was also an Assistant Supervisor of the Sunday School and co-organiser of the weekly concerts run by The Temperance Society to attract people away from the pubs.

In 1881 Cardwell appointed one of his curates, his brother Rowland, to inaugurate St Peter's, the first of several extra churches planned for the

district.

Another curate Peregrine Propert started in April 1885 as an unpaid lay worker, so driven was he to serve the community. As well as running the very popular youth club in Lillie Road, Propert was charged with St Augustine's Mission. In time he would establish a magnificent church of that name and tend it until his death in 1940.

Other curates proved less helpful. The well meaning Arthur Brittain lost £200 of church funds in three years and was packed off to India. Cardwell also faced criticisms of allowing 'Romish'

practices (candlesticks, stoles, a processional cross) at one of the sister churches. He was careful to keep within the ordinances though he admitted wishing ' that the matters in question were allowable.'

5

The Revd Ernest Hillard

A newspaper census on Sunday 24th October 1886 showed that 785 people attended St

Andrew's in the morning and 697 in the evening, the second highest figures in Fulham. Cardwell's sermons were always enjoyable and he encouraged his working class parishioners to participate in church music – though he did not share their enthusiasm for Moody and Sankey, the American evangelists.

St Andrew's had become fashionable for weddings, and one marriage provided piquant gossip for the national press. The 70 year old Dowager Duchess of Montrose married Marcus Milner, a man of 24. She had no bridesmaids and she came and left with her legal adviser, not the groom. The Vicar claimed that he was unaware of the couple's identities but more probably he had been asked to keep the marriage discreet. Anyway a friend of Marcus turned up early for organ practice and the secret was out.

In 1888 32,000 people lived within the parish of St Andrew's, ministered by twelve priests in ten churches or missions. Cardwell planned yet another church, as well as a new parochial hall for St Andrew's. He and his wife Elizabeth were immensely popular and there was widespread sorrow when their son John Herbert died in 1890. The church has a stained glass memorial window in the North Aisle.

Cardwell never took for granted the harsh existence of most people in Fulham. Though he negotiated with the laundry masters to find jobs for unemployed women, he also allowed his socialist curate HM Ward to hold a meeting in the schoolhouse campaigning for union membership and an eight hour day within the industry.

On New Year's Day 1891 the Bishop of London surprised Cardwell by inviting him to replace the octogenarian Canon Wade at St Anne's Soho. It was a wrench for the Vicar, but he delighted in the cosmopolitan nature of his new parish, and made lasting links with the Jewish community.

Fulham's loss was Soho's gain.

CHAPTER TWO

AN ALMOST MAGNETIC INFLUENCE

In February 1891 the Revd Ernest Stafford Hilliard received this letter from the Bishop of London:

'MY DEAR SIR

Are you disposed to take charge of S. Andrew's Fulham just vacated by Mr Cardwell?

Yours faithfully'

Hilliard did not hesitate and he was installed a month later, making an immediate impact on the neighbourhood. As a local editor noted, he was 'a young man whom the ladies would probably call handsome. His charm of manner, his genial pleasantries and his broad views are qualities that cannot fail to exercise an almost magnetic influence.'

It was not only the ladies who were charmed. The Referee urged its readers to admire Hilliard for his readiness 'now and again to use extempore prayer or in other wise to take a leaf from Nonconformist usage. The result is that a

6

Designs for the parochial hall

St Andrew’s exterior

large proportion of his hearers are men.'

Hilliard shared his predecessor's concern for the welfare of young people, and pressed ahead with Cardwell's proposal for a parochial hall despite the cost estimated at £3000. He also discovered a quick and inexpensive method of involving 13-17 year olds when a parishioner Walter Mallam Gee proposed a St Andrew's Lads Brigade. One hundred boys turned up for the first military-style parade in July 1891 and the organisation fared so well that Gee and Hilliard founded the Church Lads’ Brigade three months later, using the old John Street Mission as their headquarters. Membership was restricted to Anglicans whereas Cardwell had allowed young men of all denominations to join the cricket and football club.

The Fleet Street correspondent for The Newcastle Weekly, commenting on the new Brigade, doubted whether young people would accept military discipline:

'That will never suit an age that is becoming more and more democratic and is almost sufficient in itself to kill off a movement however excellent and praiseworthy,' But the Brigade retained its popularity in Fulham for many years.

Thanks to an anonymous donation of £1200, the plans for a parochial hall could proceed after Commissary General Downes sorted out various problems with the London County Council. The name of Downes will be familiar to those sitting on the South Aisle, where there is a stained-glass window of an angel appearing to Cornelius and a brass memorial to the General's son killed in a friendly-fire incident.

In August 1892 the old iron church was demolished and sold for scrap. In its place the parochial hall opened on 24th July 1893, housing two large clubrooms, two reading rooms and a library on the ground floor with a theatre on the first floor. There were ample cloakroom and toilet facilities for the hundreds of parishioners that congregated there almost every evening.

'No ordinary parish hall this,' recalled the writer Ernest Raymond, 'It was dominated by a high and proper stage, with gas footlights, gas battens overhead and lime spotlights hidden behind the proscenium arch. Here we children of the Church produced plays and pantomimes under the direction of Hilliard's three children Stafford, Harry and Evangeline.'

Hilliard himself was quite a thespian as Raymond informs us:

“Throughout Holy Week it was not the Vicar who celebrated at the altar; he stood on the gospel step that he might read the long heart-wrenching Passion stories.”

Services at St Andrew's proved so popular that churchgoers were being turned away. The competition for pews reached comic proportions with sidesmen reserving places for favoured members of the congregation. Humbler families without reservations would arrive early, resulting (as one parishioner complained) in the air becoming 'impure long before the service'.

7

Harold Haworth

Hilliard could have established a chapel of ease (St Saviour's) in Palliser Road by Barons Court station, but he preferred to enlarge St Andrew's. He asked the noted architect Aston Webb to design a side chapel and two new vestries. Webb relocated the organ to the loft, moved back the west wall and relocated the baptistry. The Lady Chapel was a particularly popular innovation.

The enlargement of the church, dedicated in February 1897, increased its capacity to one thousand. For safety reasons more doors were provided and because of the church's location the better-off entered from the West Kensington side and the poorer folk from the Fulham. This was not intentional but the practice lasted for years. It was also true that the establishment of St Alban's and St Augustine's as separate parishes took many impoverished families away from St Andrew's.

Hilliard embellished the church's interior with a rood beam to celebrate Queen Victoria's Jubilee. In 1900 at a cost of £1000 Harry Hems created a reredos of Caen stone showing Christ, flanked by two sentinels, offering everlasting intercession. The chain armour on one sentinel took two sculptors six weeks to complete. It was decided to obscure the East window to improve people's view of the beam and the reredos. Initially gold paint was used but this was later replaced by mosaic.

The church's stained glass was considered unremarkable until 1902 when Paul Woodroffe of the Arts and Crafts movement was commissioned for the east window in the Lady Chapel. His design shows Christ in Majesty, Annunciation and Nativity. Woodroffe was later to design 15 windows for the Lady Chapel of St Patrick's Cathedral, New York City.

Other improvements included an altar donated by the developer WH Gibbs in memory of his daughter and a new pulpit designed by Alex C Forrester, St Andrew's honorary architect.

An independent survey published in 1904 showed that Fulham had the lowest church attendance of 51 areas in the metropolis but St Andrew's bucked the trend. 132 men, 336 women and 53 children were present on the morning of the sample and there were 196 youngsters at Sunday School.

Hilliard's own popularity can be gauged by the Easter offerings, which every year allowed him a five week holiday in Switzerland, Algeria or the Holy Land. He reciprocated with a lavish Christmas party for the laity, where he could honour volunteers like Miss Kingsley, who devoted many years to looking after the poor of the parish.

People gave their time and money freely to the church throughout the year, but particularly during the three-day annual bazaar, which could raise around £1000. Eventually Hilliard extended the bazaar to four days and obtained an alcohol licence, to the dismay of the strong temperance lobby within St Andrew's.

For undisclosed reasons Hilliard was not popular with some local clergy and his appointment as Rural Dean proved short lived. He was also criticised by the Fulham Times for backing the Conservatives in the 1904 London County Council election and rejecting the Liberal candidates “whose long and

8

honourable public career in the service of the people and the poor count as nothing compared to safeguarding the interests of the church schools”.

The Vicar caused surprise by appointing as his senior curate the newly ordained Charles Curzon but his judgement proved sound; Curzon was a future Bishop of Stepney. The less flamboyant curate Harold Haworth found his niche in the north west of England, becoming Vicar of Bowdon and Canon Emeritus of Chester Cathedral.

Curzon's successor the Revd RE Young castigated male parishioners for leaving the women to do so much of the voluntary work:

'Where are the laymen today who are willing to give up their time to the organisation of cricket and football clubs, to the running of boys brigade and to the providing of wholesome entertainment and recreation?

Hilliard was delighted by St Andrew's sporting achievements, and occasionally took to the football field himself. He insisted on every club member making communion at least once a month.

In 1909 the Vicar asked Alex Forrester to design one final addition to his church, a lych gate to provide 'a dignified entrance to the House of God, a memorial to those in paradise and a silent sermon to all who will accept its message.'

Taking stock of his own achievements Hilliard realised that he had spent almost a third of his life at St Andrew's and badly needed some respite. A sympathetic Bishop of London offered him the less exacting parish of Christ Church Mayfair, where Hilliard was inducted in October 1910. He returned to Fulham for various engagements, including a final four day bazaar.

St Andrew's never forgot him and when he died the parishioners raised hundreds of pounds to erect a Celtic cross in his memory right beside the church.

CHAPTER THREE

A SPIRIT OF REFORM

Douglas Castleden seemed an ideal choice for Fulham Fields. Like John Cardwell, the first Vicar of St Andrew's, he had created a parish (All Saints Twickenham) from nothing. He also shared the Revd Hilliard's enthusiasm for the Scouts, but he rejected much else of the Vicar's legacy. He promised to dispense with the four day bazaar and he scrapped the parish pantomime claiming it had been used as an entry into the acting profession (not least by Hilliard's offspring). In later years the pantomime was revived and Castleden's own children participated.

Things also changed politically. Hilliard had preached against the Liberal Government's welfare reforms, and in favour of penal settlements for the unemployable, but Castleden publicly distanced himself from the values of the Conservative and Unionist Party. He adapted Fr Cardwell's 19

th Century benefits fund to bring it in line with the Liberal

Government's National Insurance Act, and he refused to take sides in the Irish Home

9

Rule controversy. Parishioners felt unsure about the new Vicar and his first Easter offering amounted to £45, a third of what Hilliard normally received.

In 1913 Castleden revived the St Andrew's dedication festival. Even here he offended some parishioners by inviting Fr Cardwell to participate and appearing to discount the achievements of Fr Hilliard. However he gained favour by instituting a series of popular lectures in the parish hall, starting with Ernest Shackleton's first-hand account of the South Pole expedition.

When War began in August 1914, the Vicar knew it would be bloody and protracted:

'We are fighting, we believe, for the right, but we are also fighting for existence.'

43 men from the parish answered the call and three died in the first month.

The Senior Curate the Revd WH Abbott, one of the first to enlist, witnessed the horrors of the War at first hand:

“Our wounded come in, in the middle of the night. They cannot get them out of the trenches until it is dark. Two of the men lay in the open 34 hours before they could be rescued, only 25 yards away from the German trenches.'

He also described how, 'A man came in with his fingers all shot off and one eye shattered, and said quite calmly as he held out his poor hand, “Please give me a cigarette, sir”.'

Back home the Vicar searched for some good to emerge from the carnage:

'We shall not hear so much about class distinctions. They are already lost sight of in the trenches.'

With costs increasing and income falling, St Andrew's set up a trust to meet any deficits in the annual accounts. Plans for a new organ had been deferred but the church ran a series of concerts to raise money for the choir. Two shows featured the superb Irish entertainers Percy French and the Rev Dr Houston Collisson, composers of The Mountains of Mourne. Collisson was a celebrity in his own right, and his signed photo raised over £10 for charity. In October 1916 he became a curate at St Andrew's and stayed for two years. Another fund-raising concert introduced a star of the future, a 12 year old dancer Angela Baddeley (many years later to play Mrs Bridges in the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs).

These entertainments brought brief respite as the War dragged to its conclusion. The church dedicated a St George's Chapel to its brave sons. Later a memorial was placed there, recording the names of more than 200 young men. By no means all came from the parish, but St Andrew's must have held a significance for them and their families.

This memorial was organised by the churchwarden Dr Greenwell Lax. He and his wife had already dedicated a brass tablet to their only son Anthony, killed in action near Salonika. The Spicer family provided a St George's window in the Baptistry for their son Edmund, who fell in Flanders. Another brass honoured the bravery of a Swedish participant Leonard Moller. And Major George Malcolm's death in aerial combat was commemorated with a lamp hanging before the altar.

10

Leonard Moller aged 20

Some men told almost unbelievable tales of survival. Capt Paul Bewsher, the nephew of the people's warden, flew three years in fragile observer and bomber planes, winning the Distinguished Service Cross before being injured at Zeebrugge. Unlike many who served, Paul was keen to speak about the thrill of combat and he published books of his patriotic poems. Another War narrative was written by Ernest Raymond, a member of the congregation. His story of Gallipoli 'Tell England' became a best seller.

The Revd Philip 'Tubby' Clayton, who had attended St Andrew's while at school, set up a refuge for soldiers of all ranks behind the trenches, calling it Toc H. After the War he established a Toc H in Kensington, providing shelter to all in need; this became a major national charity.

As Fr Castleden had predicted, the War did at least inspire a spirit of reform. In 1919 women were at last allowed to join the Church Council, and St Andrew's initially had four female members, all of them officers of welfare and missionary committees.

Early in his time at St Andrew's Douglas Castleden had caught typhoid fever and his health was never good. It was clear now that he would have to resign, but it took another two years to arrange his departure. Some parishioners never took to the vicar and malicious rumours were spread about him. It is hard to see why anyone should dislike him. Perhaps he just lacked the energy and charisma of his predecessors.

CHAPTER FOUR

KINDLY HUMOUR

In August 1921 The Revd George Ernest Nicholson became the fourth Vicar of St Andrew's, though he did not take residence until after Christmas. Nicholson had founded a very successful Church in Hanwell, which he left with reluctance:

'I was sent here,' he told his new parishioners, 'and never asked to come, so I beg of you, accept God's will and let us work together for His Glory.'

Nicholson, a former curate at All Saints Fulham, had more presence than his unfortunate predecessor Fr Castleden. A local editor described the new Vicar's appearance as ‘decidedly ecclesiastical. Fairly tall, clean shaven, hair brushed back from the temples and rather thin at the top, eyes twinkling with kindly humour and a disposition to listen as well as talk.'

He had been a guest preacher at St Andrew's on several occasions and he realised that the church had lost its shine. The hassocks and hymn books were almost beyond repair and the organ was 'a furnace with too little heat.' Nicholson resolved to cheer the place up. The sports clubs were still very well supported, and he wanted to see thriving literary, musical, dramatic and debating societies (only the acting group really lived up to his expectation).

11

St Andrew’s May Queen 1936

His first innovation was a weekly At Home where men of all social classes could smoke their pipes and discuss religion. It took nearly five years to establish a similar At Home for women (where smoking was banned). By that time Nicholson had to admit:

'I have learned to love St Andrew's, its people, its difficulties, its honesty, its curious mixture of beliefs and half-beliefs – aye I love its critics who meet you like lions in the way, and you tremble and break out into a deathly sweat, only to find the lions are genteel, affable beasties – in fact stuffed lions, sometimes stuffed with prejudices.'

In the 1926 General Strike the vicar praised the self-restraint on both sides even though the lack of public transport forced him to return from East Sheen cemetery in the back of an empty hearse.

Using prudent management and copious volunteers he succeeded in halving the church's overdraft. A lover of puns he urged parishioners:

'To St Andrew the Fisherman, give of your net profits.'

Despite economic hardships the church was blessed by a variety of benefactors. In May 1927 two parishioners donated the Stations of the Cross that still adorn the walls today. The well known violinist Marian Jay gave annual fund-raising concerts, and a show in the parish hall featured 14 year old Phyllis Calvert, the London Diocesan Bandette, who later became a popular star in films like “Madonna of the Seven Moons”.

Nicholson revived the Sunday School in St George's Mission, Fane Street, and used the same premises for a very popular boys' club. He also reintroduced the Church Lads, which had flourished elsewhere in Fulham but not at St Andrew's where it had originated.

In 1935 he made two valuable additions to his team: the Revd Hugh Richards AP and Sr Rhona Johnson. The Church Army, then occupying 8-12 Star Road, donated the services of Sr Rhona, who worked especially with the children. Her involvement with St Andrew's coincided with a decision to list female activities before male ones in the parish magazine. And the curate Hugh Richards raised people's spirits with his limericks and jokes. When a young lady gave him two love birds he named them Whisky and Soda 'after the patron saints of Kensington'.

Fr Nicholson revived the May Festival. One warm Sunday afternoon in 1936 Mary Nicholls, the verger's daughter, was crowned May Queen in the vicarage garden, after which a half mile-long procession wound through the local streets. Two thurifers preceded the great Cross of St Andrew, which was followed by eight altar boys. Four adults carried the image of the Blessed Virgin and the Children of Mary held streamers from the statue. According to a local journal:

'The blue haze and sweet perfume of the incense from fifteen thuribles wreathing the houses along the route and strains of the Lourdes hymn brought people to the windows.... (The procession) seemed to bring the Merry England of old into the 20

th

Century roads of West Kensington.'

12

Those roads still had their share of people in need. Over Christmas St Andrew's provided 100 special dinners and 90 deliveries of coal and presents. The Scouts handed out another 20 parcels.

Though the church maintained the full range of religious and social activities, funds were tight. Two volunteers repaired the hymn books with “lots of glue and lots of patience” but the Psalters had to be replaced. The bank overdraft crept back up to £222 in 1937 and when the railings were repainted Fr Nicholson had to reassure people that the work had been done by unpaid volunteers.

Though Fr Richards applauded the fascist coup in Spain the curate was no warmonger, for he described the First World War as 'that monument of individualistic selfishness and ruin'. And Nicholson, a supporter of the League of Nations, could hardly bear to contemplate a second European bloodbath. 'If there is a war,' he said, 'it means the annihilation of Civilisation.'

In those troubled times Sr Rhona saw St Andrew's as a place of refuge:

'The Church is open from early morning to dusk every day. The Lady Chapel is serene and quiet. Make the Church a real Home and there in the stillness gain the inner Love and power you need at all times.'

On the outbreak of war in 1939 the parish tried to carry on as normal - the Scouts put on their annual play with much doubling of parts - but with so many people in the forces and others evacuated church attendances fell. Nicholson accepted calmly the halving of his annual income but plunged into despair when his wife Jeanne Marie died suddenly in February 1940. The air raids that autumn finally broke his spirit and in November he was given indefinite leave – a sad conclusion to two decades of devoted and fun-filled service to St Andrew's

CHAPTER FIVE

THE GENUINE ARTICLE

The Revd John Frost is not listed among the Vicars of St Andrew's but he certainly deserves a place in the church's history. On 13 October 1940, he was inducted as Vicar of St Augustine's, Lillie Road, following the death of Prebend PSG Propert. Three nights later that beautiful building, once described as Fulham's cathedral, was destroyed in an air raid. German planes targeting the railway connection between Hammersmith and West Kensington were devastating the area.

Through the generosity of the Nonconformists Fr Frost was able to use the nearby Twynholm Hall for Sunday services, but following Fr Nicholson's departure from London he was asked to administer St Andrew's as well as St Augustine's. He felt impelled to warn his new congregation:

“I am not quite as advanced in ritual as you are accustomed to.”

Frost was faced with an immediate crisis. In January 1941 the bank demanded repayment of the St Andrew's overdraft (£350). The church could not comply so the bank turned its attention to the three parishioners who had guaranteed the sum.

13

Revd John Frost with the Mothers Union

Proud Veterans

Fr Nicholson officially resigned in July 1941, but there was no sign of a replacement. In November Fr Alfred Vann arrived as Officiating Priest to assist the hard-pressed John Frost, but it was not until the following May that a new cleric was appointed to St Andrew’s.

On his arrival the Revd William Alban Hepher found the vicarage converted into a day nursery and the parish hall used as an Air Raid shelter and a local government office. In the church the organ struggled on but needed two people to pump it, and there were no flowers because they were prohibitively expensive. However, as the church's guarantors had paid off the overdraft, the accounts were in the black, and the collections yielded £3 a week.

The parish now included a barrage balloon site on the Queens Club tennis courts, where Hepher took on the duties of RAF chaplain. He noted with amusement that homeless families would not accept a flat in the luxurious Queens Club Mansions, especially the top floor, because they felt they would be sitting targets there. In fact the bombing raids had eased off after May 1941 and did not resume for almost three years.

20 February 1944 saw a devastating blitz on streets near the church including Barons Court Road and Castleton Road. Hepher may well have been the anonymous priest praised in the local press for succouring homeless and distressed victims of the raid. He certainly invited the bombed out West Kensington Congregationalists to conduct their services in his parish hall, just as the Nonconformist Twynholm Hall had previously accommodated St Augustine's.

In Summer the flying bombs began their brief but horrendous onslaught. The last guided missile to hit Fulham landed in Beaumont Crescent on 2 August 1944 leaving 7 dead and 27 injured.

The years of aerial bombardment had many victims. Janet Hodge, later to be the Sacristan of St Andrew's, lost four of her family:

“My sister's house was a direct hit and she died protecting her next door neighbour's baby boy by flinging herself over him; he survived. Three of my uncles were killed while on home guard duty.”

Though the raids had ceased, it was not until the Japanese surrender that the armed forces could return home. Alfred Adamson, a former St Andrew's Boy Scout, had been wounded at Dunkirk and was much later captured by the Italians. Sensibly he escaped to Switzerland where his minders allowed him a five week annual holiday for winter sports. For many others captivity was far from a joke. Cpl Arthur Somner of Queens Club Mansions spent three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. Finally restored to West London he was determined to watch Chelsea play Moscow Dynamo at Stamford Bridge late in 1945. It was his last outing for he subsequently

14

Arthur Stonehouse Wartime Wedding (1942)

collapsed and died of pneumonia. Many residents of the Mansions attended his funeral service at St Andrew's, including the MP Raymond Blackburn.

Though St Andrew's has no memorial to its Second World War dead, every Remembrance Day the church honours all the brave men and women who fought for this country. In the 21

st

Century we have been privileged to have had in our midst four veterans of the conflict - John Coode, Alan Haines, Norman Nunn and Arthur Stonehouse – to receive our grateful applause.

Alan Haines devoted two chapters of his entertaining autobiography “The Mad Mad-Century Rag” (MER 2006) to his wartime experiences in the Navy. On the 6

th June 1944

(Alan's birthday) he sailed in a landing craft to Sword Beach:

“Due to my skill as a coxswain we landed smoothly to off load troops. We camped on the beach for one and a half days before taking back equipment etc; our job was done.”

Arthur Stonehouse, who married Mary Healy at St Andrew's in 1942, was Chief Engineer on a US Invasion Ship for the D-Day landings. He recalls standing on Sword Beach surrounded by the bodies of men who had given their lives for freedom.

Serving with the King's Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers, John Coode faced death in Normandy and then Germany:

“When I look back on my life I am absolutely certain that God saved me from death on at least three occasions as He had more important things for me to do on earth.”

Norman Nunn fought at Hill 112 in Normandy, the Falaise Gap and the Battle of the Bulge. In one sortie 198 men perished and only 69 survived including Norman and three of his mates.

St Andrew's had suffered less damage than most other churches in Fulham but still needed £250 for repairs. It took five years to restore the parish hall to full use and even longer to make the vicarage fit for occupation.

As he set about reviving the church, the Vicar made his intentions clear:

“A parish which is not missionary-minded is a dead parish.”

He once told me that if he had been in charge in the 1880s there would have been no St Andrew's FC, and he doubtless felt the same about the secular theatre group that had flourished under Nicholson. As soon as it was available, he used the splendid parish hall to house the Sunday School as well as Sister Isabel's club for girls, which always included singing and recitation and ended with home-made scones and jam. The Scouts and Guides returned to their pre-war strength and Denis Viner and his wife reintroduced the Church Lads. There was also a social club for teenagers and another for adults.

The vicar, a former organ scholar, composed several of his own canticles for the psalms, and would take to the keyboard himself if there was no organist available. He finally

15

William Hepher at Lancing College

succeeded in renewing the church organ; a task deferred from 1914, and installed a brand new console in the nave.

The Revd Canon Brian Pearce was a choirboy in the post-war years:

'Fr Hepher was very much a disciplinarian priest who expected us to take God and our faith in Him seriously. “You love God for Himself and not for what you want of Him or get out of Him” and “Discipleship is crossing out the I in life” are bits of spiritual advice from his sermons that I still remember today. I learnt the implications of this on one of the last classes we had with Fr Hepher prior to the Confirmation itself, Waiting for him to open the church, we (the boys) started playing football in the road beside the tower entrance. Unbeknown to us Fr Hepher had opened the door while we still played on. When we realised that the girls had gone in for the lesson we packed up the game only to find we were locked out.

'Despite our knocking and calling, the door was not opened until the session had finished and the girls had left. Fr Hepher with no word to us then locked the door and departed for the vicarage. We all went round rather shamefacedly to knock on his door, to be confronted by Fr Hepher, who challenged us with “Do you think that having placed a game of football above being at your Confirmation class you are suited to be confirmed?”

To which we mumbled “No, Father.” We then had a lesson on taking God and our promises seriously and I don't think any of us forgot it.'

Hepher relented of course, and Brian was confirmed by the Bishop of London at St George's Hanover Square.

The Vicar did not shirk controversy. He caused a minor storm one Advent by giving the Blessing and then asking all non-regular attenders and parents with young children to leave before his sermon. He was an outspoken right-winger, and publicly appealed to President Eisenhower to back the Anglo-French invasion of Egypt in 1956. He was conservative on church matters also, opposing any rapprochement with the Methodists.

He loved church music and would have preferred the hymns to be sung by the choir alone. He dismissed rhythm guitars with typical irony:

'The exponents of church swing music are without doubt honest, worthy, sober-minded men, not addicted to the scheming machinations of exhibitionists pining for limelight.'

It would be unfair to emphasise the vicar's caustic side, as Brian Pearce shows;

“I personally owe my own path to the priesthood to Fr Hepher who was convinced that I had a vocation and organised my introduction, interview and ultimate acceptance at Kelham Theological College run by the Society of the Sacred Mission near Newark. Uniquely it accepted lads of 16 for testing their vocations in the Community of the Society for two years. After passing the internal exams and completing two years national service in the armed forces the students went on to a four year theological course ending with the General Ordination Exam. I therefore thank God for Fr Hepher's

16

Fr Johnson

The Parish Hall was sold

insight and encouragement at that time and (as I later discovered) the generosity of the congregation in paying for my training at Kelham.'

In 1966, having survived several setbacks to his health, Hepher celebrated 25 years as Vicar of St Andrew's (a year early but no-one seems to have minded). He had conducted almost 2000 baptisms and 816 marriages. To mark the anniversary the parishioners collected £173, with which he purchased a record player and some LPs.

He was not finished yet. He improved the church's fabric and took away some of the pews to give a sense of space. But his health declined and in the Spring of 1970 he resigned. Fr Hepher passed away on the 16

th November 1970.

The Vicar was a shrewd collector of antique silver and bronze and he drew a lesson from his hobby:

“If we find it difficult to see, beneath the outward dismal and discouraging appearance of our neighbours, the genuine article, the fault is ours.”

CHAPTER SIX

AN INSPIRING EXAMPLE

John Cecil Johnson was born on 20th March 1923 in Oddington, Gloucestershire. From

Malvern School he went up to Peterhouse Cambridge in 1941 where he joined the University Air Squadron. After training in Florida he was posted to the RAF Volunteer Squadron 104 in March 1943 and just a month later won the Distinguished Flying Cross for a raid on a heavily defended airfield in Tunis. He later attacked major targets in Romania, Austria, Yugoslavia and Northern Italy, and had particular success in mine-laying the Danube but his favourite recollection was of dropping supplies to the hard pressed people of Czechoslovakia on Christmas Day 1944. As Acting Squadron Leader he was awarded the Bar in April 1945. Flight Magazine called him 'a flight commander and pilot of exceptional ability and courage, who has invariably set an inspiring example to all.'

After the War he returned to Peterhouse obtaining his BA in 1948. He worked with the Village Evangelists before his ordination, and on 24 May 1970 he became Priest in Charge of St Andrew's.

At his first PCC meeting there was a lengthy discussion on the state of the Parochial Hall. Since its opening in 1893 it had served the parish well but had often drained the church's funds despite the best efforts of its volunteer administrators. The recent decision by the Ballet Rambert not to hire the Hall was a serious blow. Should the net be extended to more commercial organisations? This did not appeal to Fr Johnson (or Fr J as he was widely known). He put forward a bold alternative strategy. As St Andrew's no longer attracted congregations of a thousand, a new hall could easily be fitted into

the back of the church, allowing the parochial building to be sold.

17

Church interior showing modifications made by Hepher and

Johnson

With the PCC's unanimous backing he commissioned an architect to investigate the idea. There followed what the official minutes term 'a night of doubt and sorrow' when it was reported that the old building was worth far less than the £40,000 originally expected. Even so it seemed sensible to proceed, and the parochial hall was demolished and replaced by a two-storey unit, designed by J Anthony Lewis, at the rear of the church. This would give nearly four decades of useful service.

As he had promised Fr J revived the church choir expanding it to two dozen. Quick to appreciate musical ability Fr J appointed 14 year old Trevor Dawson as church organist. One consequence was that Trevor found himself playing at his own confirmation.

On Sundays Johnson conducted Holy Communion at 8 am and 10am and Evensong at 6.30. The church was open every day with services four mornings a week. He fostered links with neighbouring churches St Alban's and St Augustine's, especially for Passion Sunday, the Harvest Festival and the Carol Service. There was Sunday School at 11am, and Fr J not only established a youth club but welcomed a similar group from a nearby estate. Like John Cardwell, the first Vicar, he believed that youngsters should not be excluded because they did not attend church.

As the Vicarage had ten rooms on its upper floors Fr Johnson invited students from the Royal College of Music to lodge at a discount if they contributed to the church's music. He was amused one day when Sir David Willcocks marched in to drag some tardy young men from their beds.

If anything was stolen from the church Fr J would tour the local junk shops, checking their stock. One such investigation led to the recovery of two altar candlesticks and the arrest of the thief.

Fr J, who famously restricted his sermons to seven minutes each, was the most approachable of men. He was devoted to his dog Pip and when the animal died he had him buried beside the church.

Wolfgang Stange, founder of AMICI dance ensemble remembers Fr J with gratitude. Back in 1980 Wolfgang taught blind students in the URC church in Challoner Road:

'One Wednesday evening I turned up with my students only to be told that the premises had been sold and we could no longer hold our class there. The following morning I went to see Fr Johnson, who hearing of our dilemma immediately welcomed us in and gave me the keys of St Andrew's. His kindness and trust overwhelmed me and helped me to find my way back to the Church.

'Shortly afterwards twelve students from the long stay institution in Teddington joined us and we started rehearsing for our first inclusive Dance Theatre performance entitled “I am not yet dead '”and so AMICI was born at St Andrew's in 1980. Fr Johnson remained our firm supporter and we celebrated the holy sacraments with him before Saturday

18

rehearsals. When we performed our “Silence” production in 1985, dealing with the persecution of the first Christians in Japan, he lent us his robes as we had no money to procure a special outfit.

AMICI members have performed in Glasgow, Warsaw, Gdansk, Berlin, Tokyo, Calgary, Boston, Cairo and Sri Lanka. The company has never forgotten how it was given a home in time of need by a compassionate human being, Fr Johnson of St Andrew's.'

In 2009 I asked Fr Johnson for his special recollections. He selected in particular the Church Lads Brigade's 80

th anniversary parade in November 1971 when 700 young

people filled the church and Air Chief Marshal Sir Augustus Walker unveiled a commemorative plaque to the Brigade's founder Walter M Gee. The CLB had returned to its original home.

A number of centenaries occurred in Fr J's time including those of St Andrew's itself, for the foundation stone had been laid in June 1873 and the church consecrated on 25

th

July 1874.

He alerted me to another centenary. On 27 April 1880 Capt Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, married Madeleine Chaddock in St Andrew's Church. The Chaddocks lived in Perham Road, as did the Vicar John Cardwell, who performed the ceremony. Sadly the Webbs' marriage was brief; the husband drowned four years later trying to swim the rapids near Niagara.

Fr Johnson decided that the Vicarage, built around 1887, was too large for the church's needs and should be put up for sale. For a new residence he chose 10 St Andrew's Road, by coincidence another former home of the Chaddocks. It was purchased for £225,000 on 12

th December 1986.

Fr Johnson had happy memories of the vicarage sale. Offers in excess of £375,000 had to be received by noon on 13

th March 1987 and the winning bid was around half a million

pounds.

Fr J married in 1986. His son Christopher sings with the St Andrew's choir whenever he can. Christopher told me of two further links between his father and the channel swimmer Capt Webb. After leaving St Andrew's Fr J ministered both in the church where Webb was baptised (Holy Trinity Dawley) and the church where Webb's father was warden (Holy Trinity Coalbrookdale).

Over Easter 1988 Fr Johnson issued his retiring message to the congregation of St Andrew's:

The Cross demands a response. It is as though Jesus is saying, ‘I have done this for you. What are you going to do for me?'

Fr J died peacefully on Friday 19th February 2010. For his funeral he had requested that

no-one wear black and that floral tributes should be replaced by donations to Christian Aid, a charity for which he and the parishioners of St Andrew's had raised considerable funds.

In a moving tribute Christopher Johnson described his father as

'A man of quiet but dedicated faith who took his priestly duties seriously and was always deeply aware of and immensely thankful for the privileges that these brought him.'

19

Fr David in Normand Park

Fr David and friend

CHAPTER SEVEN

OUR BELOVED FRIEND

Fr David Paget was inducted on 5 October 1988 after serving as assistant curate at St Mary's Bedfont. He believed in openness and made it his policy from the start:

'The church is open all day, every day so that you can come in and spend some time in the presence of God. A small amount of time spent daily with God will enable you to dedicate all of it to Him.'

He wanted the congregation to reflect the new multicultural Fulham, and he invited overseas students from the nearby Law College to worship at St Andrew's.

David introduced Caribbean evenings, group outings to the theatre and also Agapes where people brought and shared food. Parishioners participated in pilgrimages and summer camps where they lived in a close community of prayer and worship. A few people felt uneasy about these innovations but many more were inspired. David brimmed with enthusiasm and expected it from others. Stella Boyce recalls how David rejected a muted response to his prayer telling the congregation to 'speak louder if you really mean what you're saying.' Stella, then a newcomer, became

a devoted member of St Andrew's from that moment.

Fran Eridani Ball remembers how David would stop the hymn and start again if singing was not hearty enough. When she was getting married at St Andrew's in 1998, it looked as if the Bishop of Stepney, delayed in traffic, would not be able to deliver his sermon. Fr David was on the point of giving an impromptu address when the Bishop arrived in the nick of time.

Many recall David's beautiful speaking voice. He did not use the pulpit, preferring to stand on a level with the congregation partly because he suffered from vertigo. He dreaded visits to the open plan Chelsea/Westminster Hospital.

On the internet the Mystery Worshipper noted:

'His enthusiasm would make one feel that the Christian path however exhausting would be a challenging and happy one to follow.' The service was described as having ' a very familial, comfortable approach - Anglo-Catholic and quite reverent but with a homely element. For example the congregation gathered in a circle for communion and the leavened host was distributed even to the tiniest members.'

Overall the service scored 9 out of 10. 'Anyone who entered this church would leave loneliness and sadness at the door.

20

The children of St Andrew's say thank you

(photos Diana Page)

Parishioners were always welcome at 10 St Andrew's Road (the Vicarage) and every year Fr David laid on a Christmas Day lunch, helped by the Sacristan Janet Hodge. On New Year's Eve he held an 11.30 pm service. After the bell greeting the New Year came the sharing of food and drink.

Parishioner Pam Taylor has a vivid recollection of the man and the priest:

'I suppose the wonderful voice and the intense stare are the first things you notice about this man. He is not tall in stature but he is robust and energetic and moves around his congregation, engaging them with his enthusiasm, love of life and the joy of the Word. He speaks as if he has just found God and wants all to be embraced by this amazing, life-enhancing discovery. He also wants to entertain his audience and he will not stop until he has them all laughing, perhaps a little irreverently. But God will forgive us.

Then after the service, in the hall (where the terrible acoustics fight all distinguishable words) his voice cuts through and he is here roaring with laughter, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other, magnetising the indifferent, cheering up the grumpy and improving the quality of everyone's lives. The old are made young, the young are made free. The lonely have found their long-lost family.

“No-one should be alone at Christmas “he proclaims at the beginning of each Advent. Unknown numbers are expected, vegetables are prepared and crowds squeezed round tables in the vicarage. There is enough for everyone. Enough fellowship, enough laughter, enough time. “Do you have to go so soon?” he asks as we leave at 3 am the next day, tripping over the empty wine bottles.

Janet Hodge will wake him for the morning service; his hangover will be chased away by black coffee from the ancient pot. He may shake a little but his sermon will be better than ever. The challenges he gives his body seem to unleash the best of his intellect and his erudition.'

Keeping the church open and unguarded meant, as Fr David admitted, that “everything nickable had been nicked.” In May 2001 the church wardens found an intruder attacking the altar. “It's always a shock when these things happen, “David judged,” but the church people are extraordinarily resilient and they also realise that the perpetrators are not well and in need of help.”

Pam Taylor pictures him in the last weeks of his life:

'I meet him taking a 26 mile stroll around central London. He is preparing for the London Marathon. On the day he finishes the course, helping others along the way. We have a wonderful concert in the church, including Mozart's Requiem and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Pie Jesu. “I want that at my funeral!”

'A few weeks later his wishes are fulfilled. He is followed home by a disturbed individual, allows him in (we have warned him many times), puts Max his canine companion into the study and that is the end of our beloved friend.'

21

Archdeacon Stephan Welch

The following morning Janet Hodge and two other parishioners entered the vicarage to find Fr David stabbed to death. Two days later the stranger took his own life.

Fulham's response to the vicar's death was shock and disbelief. The church was packed for his requiem to hear the heartfelt words of the Bishop of Kensington and a beautiful rendering of Pie Jesu by Philippa Healey, who played Cosette in Les Miserables.

As an ugly postscript to the murder, vandals repeatedly attacked the church and broke the windows. So it was fitting that David should be commemorated by brand new stained glass window. The grapes and wheat symbolise the communion Mass he provided every day of the week

His friends also marked his fondness for the theatre by dedicating in his name seat M21 in the stalls at the Lyric Hammersmith. Jenkin Thomas, a PCC stalwart, was the first to occupy this place.

In the months following the Vicar's death the church was run by the wardens, the PCC and the Standing Committee with priceless help from Stephan Welch the area dean and the Revd Donald Easton, who had served his diaconate and Honorary Curacy at St Andrew's. The church remained open every day and the electoral roll actually increased. As one PCC member recalls,

“It's during an interregnum that the quality of church members is tested, and we held together well”

As for Fr David :'The end of our beloved friend ? Well no it isn't' writes Pam Taylor. 'His memory still draws deep emotions: laughter, tears, gratitude and inspiration. And he baptised my daughters. These initiation ceremonies will always remain precious to my family.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

HEALING MISSION

Other priests had guided St Andrew's through times of national crisis but in 2002 Fr Gavin Knight faced a unique situation. He perceived that the trauma of David Paget's death had “pierced an entire community, a community of individuals with a varied picture of strengths and vulnerabilities.”

Gavin and his wife Joanna, a clinical psychologist, have published a sensitive account of the pain they discovered and how they sought to assuage it. 'Disturbed by Mind and Spirit' (Continuum Books 2009) has a universal message. It is not a diary, and no parishioner is identified by name, yet from it we learn much about what it means to be a priest at St Andrew's.

Practically the first decision that the newcomers had to make was whether they could comfortably live in the house where Fr Paget

had died. Gavin admitted that

“Our knees were knocking with trepidation when we walked through the door but we both found that the Vicarage had a lovely feel to it.” Jo was heartened by the words of the Rev Stephan Welch, the Area Dean:

22

Fr Gavin Knight

”You will heal that house.” (Stephan had begun this process shortly after David's death by taking the PCC into the Vicarage to pray there.)

On the first anniversary of the tragedy, the Feast of Corpus Christi, Gavin in an open letter to the parish sought to make sense of the unspeakable:

“David a priest of God's Church who presided over the Eucharist daily, would have fully understood the meaning behind the message; no life is lost in Christ.”

The parish greeted Gavin and Joanna with warmth and delight and shared their joy at the birth of their first child. On Christmas Eve Trevor Dawson went to the church to check on the heating, and found Jo and Gavin on their way to the maternity hospital. The following morning, just as the service was starting, Gavin suddenly appeared and whispered to Trevor, “Unto us is born a son.” Suitably the newcomer was christened Gabriel.

Apart from his healing mission, Gavin introduced fresh ideas like a spirituality clinic, monthly prayer meetings and jazz vespers, intending to increase the size of the congregation and to involve the laity more. He retained Fr David's tradition of giving communion in a circle and he successfully initiated the new liturgy, producing a different booklet for each season. In October 2003 he and Trevor Dawson held a Parish Away Day where eleven objectives were agreed including the establishment of Children's Church, a task undertaken by Louise Scott-Noble.

St Andrew's would no longer be left open when unattended. Nor could there be unrestricted entry to the Vicarage. And the church's fabric needed immediate attention. Gavin drew up a 17 point plan of renovation and restoration.

This was a crucial moment in Anglican development within central Fulham. The days of expansion had long gone. Three of John Cardwell's churches had become one: St Oswald's had merged with St Augustine's, which had then joined with St Alban's in Margravine Road. The Vicar of St Alban's, the Revd Jack Maple, was keen to strengthen the ties with St Andrew's and he and Gavin with their respective PCCs explored various schemes for the future development of both churches.

In view of the extensive repairs needed at St Andrew's Fr Jack proposed that the two congregations should combine at St Alban's. Despite the merits of the idea and the good relations between the two churches Gavin knew that his PCC would never support leaving their traditional home. Indeed half of them opposed a temporary move to St Alban's while the mother church was being repaired.

Gavin's alternative suggestion was to transform St Alban's into a healing centre, but the situation changed dramatically when Fr Maple resigned to become Community Ministry Adviser for the London Diocese. He was not replaced, so Gavin found himself Vicar in Charge of St Andrew's and St Alban's, an area for which he felicitously revived the name of Fulham Fields. Every Sunday he conducted a 9.30 Eucharist at St Alban's then hurried to St Andrew's for 11am. There were further services at both churches during the week.

The Vicar still saw St Alban's as ideal for children and community activities, and healing and wholeness. He arranged a Re Charge Day there in November 2004 that somehow

23

Dedication of the path April 2005

Fr Martin Eastwood

combined Handel's Messiah, a wooden shepherd, the human voice and the cartoon family the Simpsons.

Serving two churches took its toll on Gavin. By Christmas he was on the point of exhaustion, and from 6

th February 2005 he conducted services only at St Andrew's.

Chris Williams the Treasurer wheeled a trolley along Margravine and Greyhound Roads conveying the statue of St Alban and the painting of St Augustine to their new home.

Gavin recalled the comments of a fellow cleric that when a parish has experienced a particular trauma it is not unusual for the priest in charge to have a short period there to enable the healing process to take place and then to create a space for the next person. That process had been completed and Gavin announced that he would be leaving St Andrew's.

On 9th April he celebrated the Eucharist in a special service where the Bishop of

Kensington the Rt Rev Michael Colclough blessed the commemorative window in loving memory of David Paget. This unforgettable ceremony was attended by David's mother Marlis Bernard. The money for the window had been raised by subscription, but Gavin had also persuaded the Hammersmith & Fulham Council to finance a small garden and

a pathway beside the church. These too were blessed by the Bishop.

Soon afterwards Gavin left to become Chaplain of Monmouth School, having achieved much in a short time. He and Jo are remembered with real affection by the people of St Andrew's. As Churchwarden Stella Boyce observed,

“Father Gavin sustained us through a period of healing, gently introduced new ideas, and encouraged our spiritual growth, something which we as Christian people need to maintain as we continue our spiritual journey.”

CHAPTER NINE

A BOLD STATEMENT

In the interregnum following Gavin's departure, St Andrew's lost none of its momentum thanks to the hard work of Fr Donald Easton and the lay members of the church. Sadly, Louise Scott-Noble, editor of the parish bulletin and organiser of Children's Church, passed away at this time.

The PCC debated the most suitable qualities for Fr Gavin's successor. A 14 point 'wish list' was drawn up covering everything from modern Catholic churchmanship to the need to ensure 'that laughter continues to feature prominently.' The ninth Vicar would have to embody the combined virtues of the previous eight. The election fell on Fr Martin Eastwood, who was licensed on 17

th May 2006.

Martin was a Yorkshireman just like John Cardwell the first Vicar of St Andrew's. He and his wife Chrissy had two lovely children, Charles and Helen, and it was soon apparent that a very talented family had moved in.

24

The children’s play area

Choir in Dublin 2008

The new priest promised 'good catholic-minded liturgy, well presented, with incense but without fuss.' Families were to be central to worship. Many years previously Fr Hepher had removed the side pews to give the church a feeling of space. Martin now converted one aisle into a children's play area. Little ones could play with the toys there even after the Sunday morning Mass had started; before the First Reading they were invited to go upstairs for Children's Church, returning later for the Blessing. This followed the pattern established by Gavin (and by Fr Jack Maple at St Alban's). There was also a regular Mums and Toddlers service on Monday morning.

The role of Trevor Dawson as Choir Master and Musical Director now took on new dimensions. Fr Martin introduced Sunday Evensong, which once a month became a Choral service with the regular choir augmented by singers from varied sources including King's College Cambridge, York Minster and the Chapel Royal. This forty strong ensemble performed at St James Piccadilly, and participated in the Diocesan Festival at St Paul's Cathedral. .

St Andrew's formed a valuable link with the North Fulham New Development for Communities, which engendered a new parish

magazine the Fulham Fielder edited by Cynthia Lustig. The first issue (October 2006) included an article headed 'Power and Control to Go Green', and ecology had a high priority both in this wide-ranging publication and in the activities of the church. Another product of the NDC co-operation was the Fruit and Vegetable Co-operative where St Andrew's opened on Tuesday mornings to sell a week's supply of greengrocery at very low cost. This enterprise, initially under the watchful eye of the veteran Janet Hodge, was a great success and won a £500 prize from the Church Times. Many purchasers stayed for a coffee and a chat. A third happy consequence was the provision of new outside railings and the re-opening of Hilliard's lych-gate.

Following the Sunday Mass on 10 December 2006, seven months after his licensing, Fr Martin shared with the congregation his vision for St Andrew's: to allow the work of the church to expand the building needed a major restructuring. With the PCC's full support plans were drawn up to create three large community halls, a cafe area and a church office as well as new toilets. Flats would be included to offset the cost. Public consultation met with a generally favourable response, and after an anxious wait the plans were passed by Hammersmith & Fulham Council.

For Lent 2007 Fr Martin invited the artist Jonathon Brown to illustrate the Stations of the Cross. Jonathon responded with large scale drawings, imagining Christ's journey through His eyes. As he explained, ‘If suffering is not somehow immediate, its message

25

Peter Strefford

is diluted.' The artist's success can be gauged from Simon Donnan's comments when the exhibition opened in the church on the 16

th February:

'My overall reaction was to ponder not only the pain and sacrifice of the Crucifixion but also to have the sense of a profoundly human experience playing out before me.'

The Summer Fair saw the launch of 'From St Andrew's to Craven Cottage', the first complete account of how Fulham FC, a Premier League club, had evolved from the church's own football team, and 2007 ended with the Restoration of the Freehold and the Institution and Induction of Fr Martin Eastwood as Vicar of St Andrew's Fulham Fields.

Like previous incumbents he enjoyed the support of a marvellous band of volunteers, but the church's activities had grown so fast that a Pastoral Assistant was also needed. There can hardly have been a more fortuitous appointment than that of Peter Strefford, already familiar to parishioners for presiding over the Fruit and Vegetable Co-op and the coffee mornings. Peter was everyone's favourite uncle – funny, tolerant, warm-hearted and seemingly inexhaustible.

The pastoral team was completed with the three year appointment of Fr Marcel McCarron as stipendiary assistant curate.

In February 2008 Peter Strefford launched the Homelessness Project, offering hot meals, hot drinks, sandwiches, cakes and friendship. Ten people appeared on the first Saturday but the numbers soon exceeded one hundred. Most of the participants were living on the streets even in the harshest weather. It needed an army of volunteers to administer the project, which was initially sponsored by Tesco and the local caterers Agincourt.

The 2008 celebration of the Stations of the Cross took the form of a competition amongst students of the Slade

School of Fine Art. Aishan Yu, who won the £1000 prize, admitted that she had approached the subject with little prior knowledge. She chose 14 found objects and painted each one to represent a Station. Another Slade student Anna Sikorska created a new votive stand for the Lady Chapel, for which the children of the parish made small clay candle-holders.

Music, always important at St Andrew's, had flourished for many years under the direction of Trevor Dawson. The arrival of Martin and Chrissy Eastwood brought further exciting innovations. In June 2008 the church held a three day music festival starting with a Friday night cabaret winningly compared by Peter Strefford and revealing the breadth of musical and comic talent in the parish. The highlights were professionally recorded on DVD by Alastair Ritchie. A Saturday organ recital was preceded by a children's workshop run by Chrissy Eastwood, Carmen Flores, Veronica Phillips and Rhiannon Lewis, and the day ended with Commotio, a musical ensemble from Oxford.

Sunday's Choral Eucharist and Evensong brought the festival to a heart-warming close. It featured three newly commissioned works: Peter Aston's Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, thereafter known as the St Andrew's Service; Humphrey Clucas's Responses; and Jonathan Coffer's setting of Gethsemane with words by Rowan Williams.

26

Prayer Dance

Mark Cazalet

Fr Martin himself composed an Introit and music for the Stations of the Cross. The works of Peter Aston and Humphrey Clucas were heard again in August when the augmented choir sang at four services in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.

For 16 days in February 2009 artist Mark Cazalet enlisted the many groups within St Andrew’s to create the Stations of the Cross from everyday materials as a shared reflection on Christ's Incarnation and Passion. These were then displayed on the nave pillars and in the chancel and Lady chapel. Mark was assisted by Kate Keara Pelen, who drew superb sketches of many parishioners.

Meanwhile the church's small exterior space was enhanced by a wildlife garden, a green enterprise led by Gavin McEwen and Annie Cooper making wonderful use of the £500 Green Church Award. Parishioners participated in the ecological programme by taking home seeds to grow produce for the summer fair and making a

Pledge for the Planet on the principle of sustainability.

Between Easter and Pentecost a new project Your Space reached out to the local community with initiatives like Fr Marcel's Alpha Course, a journey of faith and discovery. Humphrey Gervais fostered a number of life groups where five or six people could meet regularly to exchange ideas and experiences.

May’s choral evensong celebrated Felix Mendelssohn's bi-centenary and included the solo “O for the wings of a dove” beautifully sung by Charlie Richardson. A recording was placed on the BBC Radio 3 website. In August the choir participated in a service at St Paul's Cathedral and had a five day sojourn in Lichfield Cathedral, singing the commissioned works of Aston, Clucas and du Plessis.

Autumn provided opportunities to watch and to participate in dance. Gigi Preddle and Carmen Flores organised a vibrant Saturday evening presentation of Filipino folk music, dance and food and Diana Page and her dance team revisited Prayer.

Philip Gurrey became in February 2010 the fourth artist to explore the Stations of the Cross. He drew members of the congregation and used these sketches as a basis for his exhibition. A young but already established artist, Philip sought to explore the many facets of the human condition through face and figure, and produced some visceral portraits to linger in the memory.

The second Music Festival comprised three concerts by visiting singers and musicians. The opening on 23

rd June featured William Petter (tenor), Elizabeth Mucha (piano), Katy

Cooper (soprano), Carmen Flores (violin) and other artists in a programme that ranged from the 16

th Century to the present. The Saturday concert was presented by the

professional vocal octet Platinum Consort and included the premiere of Tenebrae Responsories by Richard Bates. Philip Moore, former organist of York Minster and a well known composer and arranger, gave a Sunday afternoon recital.

The Festival also spotlighted the wide ranging talents of the parishioners in a Cabaret Night, compered once more by “Pastoral Pete” Strefford. The show opened with the diminutive but dynamic Hayley's Street Dance Kids, after which the adults showed their

27

The Font

prowess in song, comedy, magic and even belly dancing. The Juice trio premiered a musical version of Shock-Headed Peter with its dreadful warnings against thumb-sucking. An imaginative video of the show immortalises not only the performers and the audience, but also the interior of the church soon to be transformed. Pastoral Pete was already wearing a white helmet, albeit one covered with sequins. Evensong closed the Festival and featured new commissions by Philip Moore and Russell du Plessis.

A unique event at the church was the showing of the prize-winning feature length documentary “End of the Line”, introduced by its director Rupert Murray, who challenged the audience to imagine a world without fish. He likened the devastating effects of modern trawling to ploughing a field seven times in the same year. The film was followed with a question and answer session, and there was helpful guidance from the Green Group on which fish to buy and which to avoid.

Another documentary, one particularly dear to St Andrew's, had its premiere at the nearby Riverside Studios. 'Nehemiah's Cross', filmed during Holy Week 2010, highlighted homelessness and spirituality with a portrait of Nehemiah, a well known member of the congregation. The film shows many other faces familiar to St Andrew's.

The Baptism Register that had been initiated by Fr Hepher in 1954 lasted until the 10th

October 2010 when the names of newly baptised Benjamin Jack and Violet Astor completed the final page. By an odd coincidence this occurred just before the builders moved in and the £2.7 million redevelopment started. Somehow all the activities of the church continued. An early arrival was a mobile kitchen, vital in particular to the Saturday project. After years of service the wooden pews and the organ and its pipes

were dismantled and removed, but the roof and walls on the Star Road side of the old extension were preserved for use in the new building.

Within the church the north side was prepared for the new font designed by Anna Sikorska. A massive bowl of Kilkenny limestone rested on four legs of yew from a single trunk, quartered and turned to make a square. It was placed in the north transept below the War Memorial and the David Paget window. As Fr Martin said, the PCC wanted a bold statement about baptismal faith linking the initiation of today's worshippers with the faith of those remembered in the church. The font was blessed by the Bishop of Kensington on 6

th February 2011.

The fifth and final annual interpretation of the Stations of the Cross was the work of Nadia Bournonville and David O'Kane. Their

illustrations were compact (never more than 45cm x 54cm).

Nadja felt that 'the images might look small in the setting of a church but this way they allow for each person to meet them individually.... I hope this will make the viewer stay with each image longer rather than being faced with them all at once.'

The complex imagery certainly repaid the closest study. For Station XI David used an image made at sunset on Berlin's Devil's Mountain, an artificial hill built from rubble after the Second World War. The edge of a cracked window enhances the silhouette of this 20

th Century Calvary though the symbolism of the keys and the fish is familiar, it is also a

reference to Carlo Saraceni's 1618 painting 'Miracle of St Benno'.

28

Canon Guy Wilkinson

A sumptuously produced limited edition 'Five Ways of the Cross', published to mark the completion of the series, provided an appreciation of the scope, variety and power of the five sets produced between 2007 and 2011.

March saw the builders' covers came off the North Wall to reveal the original brickwork and the Victorian ornaments long hidden under whitewash. With most of the demolition complete and the new foundations laid, the man behind the redevelopment Fr Martin Eastwood announced that he had accepted the post of Residentiary Canon and Precentor of St Edmundsbury Cathedral.

CHAPTER TEN

RENEWAL

Fr Martin's unexpected departure presented St Andrew's with its third interregnum this century. The church had been well served in 2001 and again in 2005, and this time it was especially blessed to have the Revd Canon Guy Wilkinson and his wife Tessa already in the congregation. Fr Guy moved into the role of interim Vicar and subsequently (to universal delight) discarded the 'interim'.

The son of a parish priest, he graduated from Cambridge in 1970, worked as a volunteer in Kenya, and then took employment with Uganda's Ministry of Finance.

After seven years in Belgium with the European Commission, Guy brought his family back to England in 1980. While working for a multinational company he also studied at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. In 1987 he became a curate in Coventry serving a large urban parish with a substantial Hindu and Sikh minority.

Three years later Guy moved to the rural parish of Ockham as Rector of All Saints and Chaplain to the Bishop of Guildford. In 1994 he returned to the Midlands and became Vicar of Small Heath Birmingham, a parish two thirds Muslim, where a careful strategy was devised and carried out to renew the Church's life and its involvement in the community.

Going further north, Guy was Archdeacon of Bradford between 1999 and 2005, then spent four years as InterReligious Affairs Adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England.

With such wide ranging experience Fr Guy was not fazed by the problem of maintaining and developing the manifold activities of a church which was also a building site. His calm, friendly efficiency cheered everyone through this difficult period, enriching the spiritual and social life of the congregation. On a charming video clip, just 146 seconds long, Fr Guy and Peter Strefford outline the church's activities and the improvements made possible by the Charity Bank. There is also a glimpse of Elinor Bell, one of the redoubtable helpers on the Saturday Project and the Knitathon (warm clothes for the homeless). (Vimeo.com/charitybank/touching-lives-every-day)

29

The Villiers Quartet play for the opening

of the Centre

Some familiar faces disappeared during 2011. Alan Haines passed away, not long after his beloved wife Dorit. The congregation grieved too over the loss of Cynthia Lustig, the founder and editor of the Fulham Fielder. On a much happier note Fr Marcel was appointed Vicar of St Edmund's Dartford and many parishioners attended his induction in September.

Carmen Flores, an outstanding viola player, initiated the Villiers Quartet at St Andrew's, and launched a series of monthly concerts entitled Haydn and Beyond. Despite the noise, the dust and the erratic temperatures, St Andrew's shone as a place of worship, service, music, poetry and dance.

Peter Strefford had kept an online diary of the redevelopment from its commencement in October 2011 when the temporary kitchen was installed to allow the Saturday project and other vital activities to continue. Twelve months later the work was far from complete but it was possible to see how the interior of the church, the community centre and the new flats would look. On the floor, the walls, the ceiling everywhere there was something new or renovated to admire.

It was not until the third week of January 2012 that Peter was able to occupy his new kitchen, just in time for the Institution of Fr Guy Wilkinson (now CBE for services to interfaith relations) as Vicar of St Andrew's. The new team included the Revd Dr Lincoln Harvey, a tutor at St Mellitus College, as associate priest and Penny Hawley as parish administrator. The first IntoUniversity class from Normand Croft took place on the top floor of the Star Centre and the Little School, a nursery, was about to begin on the first floor. Creative Kids (street dance) and a Zumba class had already started their new terms.

All was now ready for the formal opening of the new Star Centre and church on Thursday 22

nd March 2012. To universal

delight the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams agreed to perform this ceremony and to bless the renewed church. With the Baroness Eaton and other guests the Archbishop visited the

IntoUniversity presentation on the top floor and the Little School and Children's Church activities on the first floor, and spoke at length to the people involved. As he remarked afterwards:

'I like to think that a good working church is like the TARDIS in Dr Who -it's much bigger on the inside than on the outside. You go to a place like the Star Centre and you have no idea from the outside just how much is going on here to enlarge people's horizons. To broaden their hopes, and deepen their hearts and minds.'

Dr Williams also unveiled a major new artwork created for the church by Guido de Constanzo 'The Kite', commissioned by Spencer Cooper, a member of the congregation. Guido spoke movingly about the Kite during the ceremony and the Archbishop praised it in his homily:

30

Trevor Dawson & fiancée Helen Worth

The Archbishop of Canterbury with members of the

congregation

'Let it be an icon not only of our Lord and His spirit but an icon of the church itself, what we are here for, what makes us live, what lifts us up, what lifts us up carrying our neighbours with us because we are none of us healed, restored and transfigured alone.'

This unforgettable evening marked a new and exciting stage in the history of St Andrew's Fulham Fields.

Luke Ridge with the Bishop and Fr

Guy

Pentecost 2012

31

32

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

St Andrew's Church has enjoyed a presence in Fulham since 1870 and yet no-one has ever written its history up till now. I am grateful to Fr Martin Eastwood for entrusting me with this task, and to Canon Guy Wilkinson and Tessa Wilkinson for bringing it to the printed page. In addition Tessa designed the cover and the lay-out of the text, and prepared it for publication.

Of previous Vicars Fr John Johnson telephoned me not long before his passing and Fr Gavin Knight kindly checked the chapter relating to his time at St Andrew's.

Many past and present members of the congregation have been generous in their assistance, including:

Trevor Dawson and Diana Page for checking the text and for offering valuable additions

The Revd Canon Brian Pearce and Mrs Helen Bergum for evoking St Andrew's in the post-war era

The late Cynthia Lustig for the essential information in the Fulham Fielder

David Wilde for identifying the treasures of the church

Peter Strefford for the church's multi-faceted website

Christoph von Luttitz, Diana Page and Gigi Preddle for their priceless photographs.

Jenkin Thomas and Marc Maitland for their personal reminiscences

Most others are mentioned in the text, but I apologise to anyone that I have inadvertently omitted.

Additionally I must express my gratitude to the following:

The Revd Jonathan Olanczuk and Lisbeth Jansen and her colleagues at the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Dennington, for enabling me to copy their pictures of Fr Castleden

Daniel Morgan for the picture of his grandfather the Revd HW Haworth

Pauline J Brueseke for the poignant picture of her uncle Leonard Moller

Anne Drewery the Archivist of Lancing College for the rare photo of William Hepher

I was extremely fortunate to have virtually finished my research before the Summer of 2011 when council cuts forced the retirement of Hammersmith & Fulham's irreplaceable Borough Archivists Jane Kimber and Anne Wheeldon. It is vital that the Archive should be made fully accessible once more.

Morgan Phillips