Article contributed by The Revd Paul Dawson, St Andrews Church.

A history of St Andrew’s Church, Chelsea

Almost 300 years in 1718 the first church was built on this site. It was called Park Chapel and was paid for by a wealthy Christian doctor Sir Richard Manningham.

Manningham was leasing an estate known as Chelsea Park from William Sloane. The estate stretched from Church Street (now Old Church Street) in the East to Park Walk also known as Lovers’ lane and Two Penny Lane) in the West the time,

At the time there was only one Christian church in chelsea – now known as Chelsea Old Church, and the population was expanding and Manningam wanted to provide a new venue for people to gather to worship Christ.

By 1810 the population of this part of London had grown so much that the congregation saw the need to extend the building,

The enlarged building, seating 1,200 people, was reopened in October 1810 at a service attended by the future William the Fourth with an address by the presiding Bishop of London John Randolph.

The church flourished over the next 70 years, here is how one newspaper described a Sunday morning service here 1876: “could the building be plainer and less attractive? And yet we find in this plainest of buildings with the simplest service possible in the Church of England a congregation full to overflowing... It is evident that Reverend Gregory has found the preaching of the simple gospel effectual in arousing his people to a life of faith and good works.”

That life of faith and good works was in evidence by many activities in the local community. The local branch of Scripture Union, the international mission movement, had its birth in the church, and schools for both boys and girls were started by the church. However by 1910 it was clear the Park Chapel building was falling into disrepair and the congregation decided to try and raise the money to rebuild it.

Major Cyril Sloane Stanley provided the freehold of the site and a wealthy member of the congregation a solicitor named Charles Bannister provided the bulk of the £600,000 in today’s money on condition that the ministry in the church would remain a Bible-teaching one.

The Sloane Stanley and Bannister families are commemorated on the foundation plaque for this building which includes this statement of intent: “to preach the simple gospel of Jesus Christ which was for so long taught at Park Chapel”.

And so the building you are in, St Andrew’s designed by the architectural practice of Arthur Blomfield, perhaps best known for designing the Royal College of Music, was built and consecrated by the Bishop of London as an Anglican parish church in November 1913.

And its first vicar was Revd Henry Keable. Sadly however following Revd Keable’s retirement in 1918 the congregation here shrank and eventually St Andrew’s was merged by the diocese into one parish with the very beautiful St John’s on the newly built Worlds End Estate in 1973.

But now, by God’s grace, 40 years later, we have two healthy church families here and at St John’s with a range of community activities in addition to our Sunday services.

Most of you I trust will know that we are delighted to run the activities for the children at the annual street party. But you may not know about some of the other activities we run on a regular basis. Week by week we run a free homework club to support local families and on Fridays after school our FAB club with games and activities as well as a bible story and singing for under 11s.

We have a weekly youth group for teenagers here at St Andrew’s a and a free men’s gym for young guys at St John’s

We run a monthly lunch club for the over 60s on the Cremorne and Worlds end estates and have a number of annual events.

But we’d love to know more about how we as a church can best serve you, local residents, so over the coming months our new curate Sam is planning to come and visit all the residents in the Ten Acres area to say hello and find out what you think we as a church could do to serve this community.

So if you get a note through your door from us, or a knock at your door from Sam, please invite him in and spread the word to your neighbours that we’re not trying to sell anything, but are here to serve.