Churches of the Crays in the New Millennium
The Church has been a constant presence in the Crays throughout many centuries. You can gain a sense of that constancy if you take a short drive or short walk from one of the busiest crossroads of the Crays. Just a few hundred yards from the busy bustle of Foots Cray High Street you can find All Saints Church nestling sleepily in Rectory Lane. Even though traffic roars past on the A20 Sidcup by-pass within touching distance of this secluded spot of quiet greenery you nevertheless can easily imagine that this tiny church has been tucked away undisturbed for centuries. The author Getrude Nunns described it perfectly in her Foots Cray history booklet (1982): ‘Surrounded by its graveyard and standing in the meadows beside the River Cray, the church is a pleasant reminder of the quiet village of earlier times.’
The Church has been a constant presence in the Crays throughout many centuries. You can gain a sense of that constancy if you take a short drive or short walk from one of the busiest crossroads of the Crays. Just a few hundred yards from the busy bustle of Foots Cray High Street you can find All Saints Church nestling sleepily in Rectory Lane. Even though traffic roars past on the A20 Sidcup by-pass within touching distance of this secluded spot of quiet greenery you nevertheless can easily imagine that this tiny church has been tucked away undisturbed for centuries. The author Getrude Nunns described it perfectly in her Foots Cray history booklet (1982): ‘Surrounded by its graveyard and standing in the meadows beside the River Cray, the church is a pleasant reminder of the quiet village of earlier times.’
In St Mary Cray the Salvation Army church is another that continues quietly and stoically to hold its own while the dizzying pace of modern life surges all around. The church marked its 125th anniversary during the New Millennium. [Photo]. It arrived during the late 19th-century industrial ‘boom’ era of St Mary Cray. It was built in the residential ‘new town’ area of Anglesea Road and Wellington Road. The new houses in this small area bordered by Kent Road and Lower Road answered an urgent need for local family accommodation. The working population of St Mary Cray had been swelled by the railway’s arrival in 1860 and the growth of jobs in the paper mills. It was for a similar reason that the new Anglican church St Andrews was built in Lower Road in 1892. Parts of this district of St Mary Cray are now categorised as a conservation area.
Church buildings are in part a reminder of bygone days when church attendance was for most families a regular Sunday habit or obligation. In more modern time some faiths have experienced a gradual drop in congregation numbers. In 2015 this saw the local Church of England form a new Cray Valley Benefice whereby for cost-effectiveness St Andrews merged with its much older neighbour St Mary’s. St Paulinus another C of E church had been made redundant in 1978.
The final issue of Network the St Andrews church magazine saw on its May 2015 front cover a splendid photograph of the church when it stood in open fields on the west side of Lower Road. At that time circa 1900 there was still some physical separation, by open land, of the respective villages of St Mary Cray and Orpington. The ‘new town’ area south east of St Mary Cray High Street and east of Lower Road marked the boundary of the built-up St Mary Cray. Writing in 1999 John Blundell credited that development, by then a century old, for its ‘neat stock brick houses with slate roofs’.
The final issue of Network the St Andrews church magazine saw on its May 2015 front cover a splendid photograph of the church when it stood in open fields on the west side of Lower Road. At that time circa 1900 there was still some physical separation, by open land, of the respective villages of St Mary Cray and Orpington. The ‘new town’ area south east of St Mary Cray High Street and east of Lower Road marked the boundary of the built-up St Mary Cray. Writing in 1999 John Blundell credited that development, by then a century old, for its ‘neat stock brick houses with slate roofs’.
St Mary Cray and Orpington are nowadays long since joined up by the residential new housing sprawl across to the Grassmeade and Ramsden areas. The people of St Mary Cray would not have known in 1900 that the village of Orpington would prove to be ‘over the rainbow’: the crock of gold of post-war bigger expansion and modernisation.
[Photo: corner of Kynaston Road and Zelah Road in the post-war new housing area that has filled former outlying open meadowland to the south of St Mary Cray.]
[Photo: corner of Kynaston Road and Zelah Road in the post-war new housing area that has filled former outlying open meadowland to the south of St Mary Cray.]
History tells us that the local churches have worked ceaselessly to serve the spiritual needs of the Crays communities. No one has expressed this better than Tony Lathey who has industriously chronicled the history of St Mary’s church in particular and the St Mary Cray + St Paul’s Cray districts in general. And so if we allow that churches from time to time have had to evolve and reinvent themselves to provide relevant social, friendship and support services for their local communities, we can gain from Tony’s research an understanding of the context in which St Mary’s C of E remains a valuable presence in the heart of St Mary Cray beside the railway viaduct.
Tony’s most recent booklet of 2015 [Photo] introduces St Mary’s as a 13th-century church built at a time when the area we now call St Mary Cray was part of the manor of Greater Orpington. It was comprised at that time of Orpington, Downe, Hayes, Knockholt and St Mary Cray. In 1032 during the reign of King Canute a priest named Eadfy had donated this large parcel of land to the monks at Canterbury.
From the time of St Augustine who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601 to the reign of Henry VIII 1509 to 1547 the English Church was in full communion with the Church of Rome. We can mark the existence of the modern-day separate C of E and R.C. places of worship in the Crays from Henry’s quarrel with the Pope in the 16th century.
Tony’s most recent booklet of 2015 [Photo] introduces St Mary’s as a 13th-century church built at a time when the area we now call St Mary Cray was part of the manor of Greater Orpington. It was comprised at that time of Orpington, Downe, Hayes, Knockholt and St Mary Cray. In 1032 during the reign of King Canute a priest named Eadfy had donated this large parcel of land to the monks at Canterbury.
From the time of St Augustine who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in 601 to the reign of Henry VIII 1509 to 1547 the English Church was in full communion with the Church of Rome. We can mark the existence of the modern-day separate C of E and R.C. places of worship in the Crays from Henry’s quarrel with the Pope in the 16th century.
The C of E is episcopal, i.e. governed by bishops, each in charge of a diocese (district) that sub-divides into smaller parishes. As a legacy of its manorial origins (Orpeditune = Greater Orpington) St Mary’s fell under oversight of All Saints Orpington [Photo].This lasted till 1868 when Canterbury allowed St Mary Cray to become a separate parish.
Rapid post-war expansion of population in the Crays brought the construction of some new church buildings. In contrast to the typical Victorian brick and stone hulks the new style churches favoured a sleek slimline look.
In the Poverest area the new Baptist Church arrived in 1963. [Photo]. Its hilltop location allowed its modest spire to be seen from all directions. The need for a new building had become pressing because of overcrowding at the old (now demolished) Baptist Church near Orpington Pond. But funds were slow in coming and the new building though attractive and functional was never completed to the full specification.
In the Poverest area the new Baptist Church arrived in 1963. [Photo]. Its hilltop location allowed its modest spire to be seen from all directions. The need for a new building had become pressing because of overcrowding at the old (now demolished) Baptist Church near Orpington Pond. But funds were slow in coming and the new building though attractive and functional was never completed to the full specification.
The parish map had changed in the early 1960s after St Barnabas church was built at the new housing estate on the west side of St Paul’s Cray. It became an independent new parish while on the opposite east side of the A224 Cray Avenue and Sevenoaks Way the two churches St Mary’s in the High Street and St Paulinus in Main Road constituted the previous parish.
St Barnabas [Photo] was a striking and some said strident architectural addition to the Crays skyline in 1964. It exemplified the ‘modernist’ style that was introduced to public consciousness and controversy when the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral was unveiled in 1962.
Although the eye-catching green roof (made of copper) of St Barnabas can be espied from many miles distance, for example from the elevated heights of Chelsfield looking down upon the Cray valley, from close-up around Leesons Way and Cotmandene Crescent the church mischeviously disappears behind rows of houses and takes quite a bit of rooting out to where it fronts on to Rushet Road.
‘All that glitters is not gold’ … or do we mean ‘green’: the spectacular roof at St Barnabas has unfortunately continued to leak despite a half century of effort to remedy the rain penetration. Moreover a repair to the spire was needed in 1990.
St Barnabas [Photo] was a striking and some said strident architectural addition to the Crays skyline in 1964. It exemplified the ‘modernist’ style that was introduced to public consciousness and controversy when the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral was unveiled in 1962.
Although the eye-catching green roof (made of copper) of St Barnabas can be espied from many miles distance, for example from the elevated heights of Chelsfield looking down upon the Cray valley, from close-up around Leesons Way and Cotmandene Crescent the church mischeviously disappears behind rows of houses and takes quite a bit of rooting out to where it fronts on to Rushet Road.
‘All that glitters is not gold’ … or do we mean ‘green’: the spectacular roof at St Barnabas has unfortunately continued to leak despite a half century of effort to remedy the rain penetration. Moreover a repair to the spire was needed in 1990.
Meanwhile across the valley St Mary’s church in St Mary Cray acquired in 2016 what was indeed a gold-coloured and glittering new spire {Photo] when a long-overdue repair was sanctioned by the diocese budget.
Many changes in history are evident from the modern-day presence of churches in the Crays. If they could speak, the very oldest Anglican churches could tell us many tales of long-ago Saxon, Norman and medieval times. They would regard as young whippersnappers the non-Conformist churches that arrived on the scene in the mid- to late 19th century, even though to our eyes in 2021 these such as the Baptist church, the Temple church and Salvation Army church are solid institutions that already pre-date us by several generations.
The modern face of life has to be accommodated now. In the Crays there are church premises where new Christian groups hold their services: for example the King’s church, the Oak Community church and the Redeemed Christian church of God. Humanist a.k.a. ‘non-religious’ ceremonies have meanwhile become increasingly favoured for weddings, christenings and funerals; so too have ‘green’ funerals using biodegradable coffins made only from natural materials.
A tradition unique to the Crays is to witness the spectacle of a large gypsy funeral. And so in the New Millennium folklore is mingled with the religious and the secular as individual families choose the type of ceremony that they want.
Many changes in history are evident from the modern-day presence of churches in the Crays. If they could speak, the very oldest Anglican churches could tell us many tales of long-ago Saxon, Norman and medieval times. They would regard as young whippersnappers the non-Conformist churches that arrived on the scene in the mid- to late 19th century, even though to our eyes in 2021 these such as the Baptist church, the Temple church and Salvation Army church are solid institutions that already pre-date us by several generations.
The modern face of life has to be accommodated now. In the Crays there are church premises where new Christian groups hold their services: for example the King’s church, the Oak Community church and the Redeemed Christian church of God. Humanist a.k.a. ‘non-religious’ ceremonies have meanwhile become increasingly favoured for weddings, christenings and funerals; so too have ‘green’ funerals using biodegradable coffins made only from natural materials.
A tradition unique to the Crays is to witness the spectacle of a large gypsy funeral. And so in the New Millennium folklore is mingled with the religious and the secular as individual families choose the type of ceremony that they want.
How successfully are the churches of the Crays meeting the challenge of relevance in the New Millennium? We can report that all the churches of all denominations are staunch in their mission statements. For example, Tony Lathey writes of the amalgamated single benefice of St Andrew’s and St Mary’s: ‘Both churches remain in regular use with services on Sundays and during the week … both are available for baptisms, weddings and funerals … both continue the tradition of hosting community events.’
It is apparent from our review that peer churches in the locality are likewise singing from the same hymn-sheet, if you’ll forgive the expression! – in other words their calendars offer a variety of all-age group activities and fellowships to compliment the standard services of worship and the provision of pastoral care.
But let’s cite St Barnabas in St Paul’s Cray grasping the nettle of ‘Going Forward with God – Questions for the Future’. Their website sets this scene: ‘The Church generally in this country faces the problems of apathy, cynicism, cultural distance (‘it’s nice to know the church is there, but don’t ask me to go to it’), and the rise of a kaleidoscope of New Age and other spiritualities.’
Photo: King's Church, St Paul's Cray is a near neighbour of St Barnabas, and is another post-war new-build in the 'modernist' style.
It is apparent from our review that peer churches in the locality are likewise singing from the same hymn-sheet, if you’ll forgive the expression! – in other words their calendars offer a variety of all-age group activities and fellowships to compliment the standard services of worship and the provision of pastoral care.
But let’s cite St Barnabas in St Paul’s Cray grasping the nettle of ‘Going Forward with God – Questions for the Future’. Their website sets this scene: ‘The Church generally in this country faces the problems of apathy, cynicism, cultural distance (‘it’s nice to know the church is there, but don’t ask me to go to it’), and the rise of a kaleidoscope of New Age and other spiritualities.’
Photo: King's Church, St Paul's Cray is a near neighbour of St Barnabas, and is another post-war new-build in the 'modernist' style.
If you’re heading along ‘retail row’ a.k.a. Cray Avenue to sample the modern materialism of the Nugent Shopping Centre and its many neighbouring shops, do you ever notice the signposts that identify three of the local churches in the area? [Photo]. The signs are situated at the crossroads with Kent Road and Poverest Road. Perhaps they signal that if you leave the ‘road to Mammon’ there is a richer spiritual nourishment to be found in these and all the other churches of the Crays.
