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Benefactor
1800 – 1869
The Blind Squire: Founder, principal benefactor and patron of St John’s, Worksop. A generous and kindly landowner who was instrumental in bringing St John’s into being.
George Savile Foljambe inherited the Osberton estate 1814, on the death of his grandfather, Francis Ferrand Foljambe. George’s own father, John Savile Foljambe had died in 1805. George married Harriet Emily Mary Milner, granddaughter of Lord Edward Bentinck, younger son of the Duke of Portland of Welbeck Abbey, on 9th December 1828 and their son, Francis John Savile Foljambe was born 9th April 1830. Harriet died later that same year and in 1833 George built the church of St John the Evangelist at Scofton on the Osberton estate, in memory of Harriet. Harriet was originally laid to rest at Sturton Le Steeple, the nearest church at that time within the Foljambe holdings to Osberton but was later moved to the family vault at Scofton.
George Foljambe was a generous and thoughtful benefactor of those who less fortunate than himself. Anecdotes include providing the sixty navvies laying the railway across his land with a hare a piece to supplement their diet and providing the timbers for the roof of the Newgate Street Primitive Methodist Chapel in Worksop. (Jackson, M. 2005)
He married for a second time in 1845. This later marriage to Selina, Viscountess Milton resulted in seven children.
George’s political interests lay with the Liberal Party, and two of his sons were elected as Liberal members of Parliament in Nottinghamshire. Both the family’s Liberalism and evangelical churchmanship was in contrast to the Tory politics and high churchmanship of the Dukes of Newcastle. (Jackson, M. 1992)
Sadly, by the occasion of his 48th birthday which he marked by supplying ‘an ample dinner of good English fare of roast beef and plum pudding’ to the inmates of the Union Workhouse on Eastgate and also to those receiving outdoor relief, George had lost his sight and had been forced to abandon his previous activities of country sports and hunting. The sale of his pack of hounds and stable of horses netted nearly £7, 000. Nevertheless, George continued to take as active an interest in country pursuits as was practicable, attending country shows, races and hunt meets at which he continued to wear the hunting costume of his earlier exploits.
George Foljambe was one of the early supporters for the cause of building a new church in Worksop. He initially offered £1,000 towards the cost of St John’s, later increasing this to £3,000 towards the endowment plus £1,000 to the building fund, and in 1867 he purchased the ‘Ramsdens’ school rooms on Eastgate for £400 to serve as both school and as temporary church until St John’s was opened in 1869. This school was soon inadequate to the needs of the growing population of the town and was expanded before being transferred to the Minister and Churchwardens of St John’s on 1st January 1879.
As the patron of the new Worksop church, George was entitled to present his choice of clergyman to St John’s, something the Foljambe family continued to do until 1922 when they transferred the patronage of St John’s to the Church Pastoral Aid Society. (Straw, W. 1969)
Such was the appreciation of the contribution made by George to the establishment of St John’s, and to numerous other good causes throughout the local area, that when he died in December 1869 only four months after the opening of the new church, a memorial to him, in the form of a reredos in the chancel, was raised through public subscription.
The reredos was designed by the Sheffield sculptor Theophilus Smith and unveiled on 18 December 1870. White (1875) provides a detailed description of it:
'This memorial, which surrounds three sides of the chancel, consists of a reredos and an arcade of sixteen panels. The arches of the latter are moulded, and the panels are of polished Sicilian marble. The space below is filled with geometric mosaic tiles, the colour of which adds greatly to the general effect. The reredos is formed of three effectively moulded arches, cusped and supported on shafts of Belgian marble. The panels are of figured Derbyshire alabaster, the centre one containing the sacred monogram illuminated in gold and colours, while those on each side are decorated with incised symbolical devices. With each device is interwoven an illuminated ribbon, bearing the texts: —"I am the true vine,"— "I am the living bread." Immediately above the communion table are the words—"This do in remembrance of me." The reredos terminates in a crocketed gable, in the centre of which is carved a trefoil panel, emblematic of the Trinity. The memorial is Early English to harmonize in character with the style of the church.'
Straw (1969) noted that the description ‘omits the fact that the panels on the North side bore the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, those on the South side the Ten Commandments.’
In 1931 oak panelling was installed over the reredos and arcade although the three alabaster niches of the reredos were left on view. The crocketed gable was also removed. The new reredos was dedicated by the Bishop of Southwell on 17 January 1932.
Benefactor
1812 – 1883
A redoubtable Lady who energised the Church committee into action through her fundraising efforts and her offer to purchase the building site for the new church.
Selina Charlotte Jenkinson was the second of three daughters born to Charles Cecil Cope, 3rd Earl of Liverpool and his wife Julia.
She first married William Charles Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton, heir to the 5th Earl Fitzwilliam of Wentworth Woodhouse in August 1833. This marriage resulted in a still born son, followed by a posthumous daughter born following Viscount Milton’s death in 1835. Lady Selina retained the title of Viscountess Milton throughout her life.
In August 1845 she became the second wife of George Savile Foljambe of Osberton. Together they had seven children: Cecil George Savile, Elizabeth Ann, Frances Mary, Henry Savile, George, Caroline Fredericca and Evelyn Selina.
Lady Milton was active in the campaign to raise the funds to build St John’s. She arranged for a three-day bazaar and sale of works in the Assembly Rooms which raised a substantial amount towards the combined total of £8,600 for both the church and the ‘living’ of the new vicar, and it was Lady Milton who propelled the committee into finally making a decision on a site for the new church. She offering to pay for the land on which the church was to be built on the simple proviso that work commenced within one month. (Straw, W. 1969)
That Lady Selina had the agency and capacity to make good her promise to pay for the building plot speaks to both her high social position and to the quality of her relationship with her second husband, George Foljambe.
Until the Married Women’s Property Act of 1870, the property of a women, whether earned or inherited, became the property of her husband upon their marriage. The identity of the wife became legally absorbed into that of her husband, effectively making them one person under the law. In contrast, single and widowed women were considered in common law to be femes sole, and they already had the right to own property in their own names. Only the extremely wealthy were exempted from these laws – under the rules of equity, a portion of a married woman’s property could be set aside in the form of a trust for her use or the use of her children. However, the legal costs involved in establishing trusts made them unavailable to the vast majority of the population.
Having lived as a widow for ten years, with all of the independence that widowed status granted her, Lady Selina opted to gamble that same independence by marrying George Foljambe, a supporter of the Liberal party, in direct contrast to the Tory politics of her own family and the family of her first husband. Whether this gives an indication of the strength of Lady Selina’s character alone or the quality of the relationship between herself and her second husband, it is difficult to resist the temptation to attribute very modern ideals to Lady Milton who married George as his eyesight failed.
Benefactor
1820 – 1893
‘Mr Worksop’ A sawyer by trade, an entrepreneur by inclination, and a man of his time. The driving force behind the building of St John’s, president of the Worksop & Retford Brewery Co. Ltd. and Chairman of the local Board of Health from 1858 – 1877
Joseph Garside was a son of Worksop, baptised at The Priory Church on August 10th, 1820, child of Benjamin, a ‘sawyer’ and his wife Maria of Low Town.
Joining his father in the timber trade, by 1841 Joseph was still living in Low Town but now had a wife and daughter. He had married Elizabeth Blake, the daughter of an innkeeper in June 1840 in Bulmer, Yorkshire and they went on to have three children together; Sarah born 1841, Martha born 1843, and Benjamin born 1845 who died aged 3 yrs. At Benjamin’s baptism, Joseph was described as a Timber Merchant and by the time of Elizabeth’s death in January 1848 the family were living on Potter Street.
Joseph’s father had set up in business and had won a contract to supply timber to the North Midland Railway. This entrepreneurial instinct was further magnified in Joseph and enabled the family’s climb up through the ranks of the commercial classes and social rankings to the height of Worksop society.
Joseph married for a second time the year following Elizabeth’s death. November 1849 saw Catherine Grafton become the second Mrs Garside. Daughter of Timothy Grafton, boat builder and timber merchant of Grafton House on Eastgate, Catherine bore Joseph a daughter who was baptised Catherine Maria in August 1850 in the Priory Church. In the census of 1851, the family was living on Potter Street with two servants and Joseph is recorded as a timber merchant employing fifty-five men. Catherine died aged 45years in the early spring of 1860.
The 1861 census finds Joseph living with the daughters from his first marriage in Carlton House, a house he had built on Carlton Road, and listed as a timber merchant employing a hundred and forty-two men and twelve boys, and also a farmer of 130 acres with five men and a dairy maid. His youngest daughter, Catherine Maria is listed as a boarder at a school on Cheapside run by Olivia Morton. Carlton Road was an up-and-coming area of the town, and Carlton House must have been one of its largest and most prestigious homes. A peep into the International Horticultural Exhibition held in London in May 1866 reveals Joseph Garside, Esq. of Carlton House, Worksop entering Class 168 (Grapes; 8 bunches of “Black Hamburg”) the results no doubt, of the work of J. Jefferson, gardener, and the Carlton House glasshouses.
On August 27th, 1868, in Scarborough Mary Shelton Eddison became the third Mrs Joseph Garside. Mary was the daughter of John and Matilda Eddison of Park Street in Worksop. This final marriage resulted in the birth of Abraham Shelton in 1869, Josephine in 1870, Percy in 1871, Frederick in 1872, Sydney in 1873 and Isiline in 1875. Only Abraham, Frederick and Isiline grew to adulthood.
By the census of 1881 Joseph is a timber merchant employing a hundred and twenty-eight men and eight boys, but he is now employing twelve men and eight boys to farm his 794 acres, alongside his brewery business which employs twenty-four men. At home with him at Carlton House are his wife and their three surviving children plus five servants. A decade later, he is recorded as timber merchant, ship builder, sand merchant and ship owner.
The marriages of Joseph’s children and the lives of his grandchildren help to tell the story of how far the business acumen of Joseph allowed the family to flourish and to move upwards in society.
Joseph and Elizabeth’s eldest daughter Sarah became the second wife of Thomas Gouldesbrough in 1868. This marriage resulted in three children; Colin, Beatrice who married Dr Kemp of Worksop, and Claude who became a London based Medical Practitioner specialising in Radiology. They lived at ‘Highfields’ on Carlton Road.
Joseph and Elizabeth’s younger daughter Martha married Daniel Fossick Alderson (1827-1881) in 1866. A partner in her father’s Priorwell Brewery Company, they lived at Elm Tree House on Potter Street, later moving into Park House on Park Street. They had six children together; Joseph Ellerton who died at five days, Ellerton Garside who studied at Oxford University before being ordained as a priest in the Church of England, Eveline Maude, Rosie, Donald Fossick Jr, and finally Ethel who lived for only four months. Donald Fossick the younger became a barrister at law and served at a Churchwarden of St John’s. He is remembered in a window at St John’s which was ‘the gift of friends and parishioners. Eveline Maude became the second wife of Sir John Robinson of Nottingham’s Home Brewery and the founding benefactor of St Anne’s Church in Worksop, so becoming Lady Robinson of Worksop Manor.
Catherine Maria, daughter of Joseph and his second wife, Maria Grafton, married Edward Thomas Moore, a solicitor from Sheffield in 1869. They had four children together: Ralph Headly, Edward Grafton, Cuthbert, and Harold. Catherine Maria’s maternal aunts Elizabeth and Mary Ann, daughters of Timothy Grafton had married William Ellis and George Hawson respectively and they lived at The Mount, on Carlton Road, near neighbours of their former brother-in-law, Joseph and his third wife.
Of the surviving children of Joseph’s marriage with Mary Shelton Eddison only Frederick and Isiline married and had families of their own. Abraham Shelton remained at home with his parents and then later lived with his sisters. Frederick married in 1897 and his eldest daughter was baptised at St John’s Church in 1898 by the Rev Dobree. In the 1911 census Frederick is living on ‘independent and private means’ in Hanover Square in London with his wife Constance Helen, their two surviving daughters, and ten servants, including a butler, a chef, and a valet!
Isiline first married Peter Henry Vale Nicholas while abroad in France in 1896, though this marriage ended in divorce in 1911. A year later Isiline married again. This second marriage was to Dr William Wetwan and produced a daughter, Mary Isiline Wetwan who in her early twenties married Robert Charles Plumtre Ramsden of Wigthorpe Hill, Carlton in Lindrick on 7th December 1934. Isiline’s home for much of her adult life was Ashley Grove, on Carlton Rd, where she died in 1937.
Joseph’s success in business allowed him the freedom to involve himself in various public and civic roles. His knowledge of various aspects of commerce, alongside his practical experience from his early days as a sawyer would have lent him a broad perspective on practical matters, and as such he chaired the Local Board of Health for many years and set in train the development of a reliable sewage system for the town which eventually resulted in the Bracebridge Pumping Station, a local landmark to this day. He was a generous donor to the Nurses Home and to the establishment of the Victoria Hospital, but he was also instrumental in steering the plans for a new church for the town to a successful conclusion. He gave a good decade of his life to overseeing the project and to ensuring that the hopes and aspirations of all those involved in working towards delivering St John’s were achieved.
Chairmakers and Parishioners
For a century Worksop was at the centre of the production of Windsor Chairs. Rare examples are eagerly sought by collectors and can change hands for thousands of pounds, but these chairs were made for everyday use in small workshops by craftsmen utilising plentiful supplies of timber and the skills handed down for generations from Master craftsman to apprentice.
In 1822 John Gabbitas, a native of Retford, and his wife Elizabeth moved from Gamston to Worksop. Along with their two-year-old daughter Mary Ann, John brought his skills as a Windsor chairmaker, likely drawn to Worksop by the plentiful supplies of timber essential to furniture making. They set up home on Eastgate, then known as Common Side. In 1825 twin sons Peter and John were born, followed by Louisa in 1828, Suzanna in 1829 and Frederick in 1833. John Jr and Louisa died in May and June 1830 respectively, and 1839 the family lost John Snr. At this point, Elizabeth’s business acumen and shrewdness came to the fore as she assumed responsibility for both the family and the business, having the chairs produced in the workshop stamped with her own name and carrying samples of their workmanship throughout the midlands and across the north. John Snr’s brother Henry and the apprentices they had trained up together in the workshop produced the chairs, whilst Elizabeth undertook the business of securing sales and promotion of their wares. In the 1844 White’s Directory and Gazetteer Elizabeth Gabbitas is listed as one of seven Chairmakers and Wood Turners trading in Worksop. That same year she married for a second time. Her new husband was a publican who had been recently widowed and who also lived on Common Side.
Elizabeth and her second husband moved to Derbyshire, and her youngest son Frederick boarded with his uncle Henry, working alongside him as a Windsor Chairmaker. Frederick’s elder brother Peter worked as a machine maker, carpenter and became a Methodist Lay Preacher in Somerset before finding fame as the ‘Clifton Poet.’
Frederick stayed in Worksop working as a Chairmaker and marrying Sarah Keeling in St John’s Church in 1873. They set up home in Norfolk Street where Frederick continued to work as a Chairmaker and shop keeper until his death in 1886.
Uncle Henry continued to work as a Master Chairmaker throughout his life. By 1852 he was working in partnership with Benjamin Gilling, husband of Henry’s niece Mary Ann, the same Mary Ann who had arrived in Worksop as a small child with her parents John and Elizabeth Gabbitass.
Many of brothers John and Henry’s children and grandchildren lived in Worksop, and Henry’s great grandson Tom is listed on the St John’s War Memorial to the fallen of the 1914-18 war.
First in the St John’s Church Register
Worship began to take place well before the building of St John’s Church got underway. Families were drawn to Worksop from the surrounding countryside by the new opportunities for employment that came with the increased industrialisation. Some of these families settled in the town, others moved on again in search of a better life.
Edith Robbins is the first name that appears in the Baptism Registers. Edith’s baptism is recorded as taking place on 19th December 1867 in the District of St John, Worksop. In the Register the printed word ‘Parish’ has been crossed out and corrected to ‘District’ by hand in dark ink.
The ‘District’ of St John had been constituted by order of council, that is to say, had been approved personally by Queen Victoria at a meeting of the Privy Council. The District of St John’s was a temporary measure until such time as the building of the church allowed the new Parish of St John’s to be established.
For the nearly two years between the order of the council and the consecration of the newly built St John’s church in August 1869, services were held in the school rooms on Eastgate that had been purchased by GS Foljambe from Squire Ramsden of Carlton. Edith’s parents would have brought her to the school rooms and her Baptism would have taken place there.
Edith was the first child of Joseph Robbins and Elizabeth nee Godfrey who had married earlier that year at the Priory Church. Joseph had been born in West Markham and worked as a groom. Elizabeth and Joseph had two further daughters, Agnes born 1869 following the family’s move to Sheffield, and Mary born 1871. Both Agnes and Elizabeth died in 1873. Joseph married for a second time and went on to have children with his second wife Ellen. Edith married in Sheffield in 1888.
First vicar of St John’s
Connections between families, especially in small towns sometimes lead to new opportunities and sometimes lead to marriage.
Born in Doncaster in 1804, in 1861 Charles Bury was the vicar of St Mary’s Tickhill, a church whose living was in the patronage of the Foljambe family.
Despite the new church being unbuilt and a final decision as to its precise location yet to be reached, by the end of November 1867 Rev Bury was admitted to the perpetual curacy of the new District of St John’s. Rev Bury arranged for the Bishop of Lincoln to consecrate the new Church on August 9th, 1869. Rev Bury and his family are recorded in the 1871 census as living in the St John’s Vicarage on Carlton Rd but by Easter 1872 he had resigned the living of St John’s and returned to his former parish in Tickhill.
Charles’ elder brother William was also a vicar. He had the living of St John’s church, Scofton, on the Osberton estate during the 1850s and 1860s and also ran a preparatory school from Scofton House on Park Street in Worksop. William’s second marriage had taken place in Ordsall in 1829 and William Jr, the fourth son from this later marriage and yet another vicar, married Elizabeth Anne Foljambe, the eldest daughter of George Savile Foljambe and Selina, Viscountess Milton, in 1888.
The longest serving vicar of St John’s
The Church Pastoral Aid Society was established in 1836 to support parish clergy facing the rapid social change brough about by the industrial revolution. The objective was to provide vicars with curates to assist them in their work in parishes to ‘take the gospel to everyman’s door’ Rev Dobree was an exemplar of a vicar who was devoted to the people of his parish.
Following the death of his father in 1869, Francis John Savile Foljambe had become patron of the living of St John’s, and his choice for Rev Bury’s successor was an assistant secretary of the Church Pastoral Aid Society.
George Dobree was born in Guernsey in 1831. He married his first wife Miriam, daughter of the Vicar of Finningley, in 1863. Their marriage was childless, and in August 1878 Miriam died while in London. Early in 1881 George married for a second time. Like her husband, Marion Harriet Carey, the second Mrs Dobree, was a native of Guernsey, and her father was also a Clergyman. This marriage was also without issue, but by the time of the 1881 census, the newly married couple have a niece, Ameilia Dobree aged five, living with them in the St John’s Vicarage. The couple provided a home for his deceased brother’s three children, as eventually Ameilia was joined in the Carlton Rd Vicarage by her siblings Henry and Mary.
Rev Dobree instigated both the annual St John’s trip to Cleethorpes and the establishment of the St John’s Institute, later to be known as the Parish Hall. William Straw estimated that near on one tenth of the entire population of Worksop went on the Trip of 1900. Trains were chartered to convey the day trippers away for a day of healthy sea air and all of the attractions of the seaside. Sunday school children travelled at a discounted ticket price which varied according to age. The St John’s Institute was intended as ‘a recreational centre for a rapidly growing industrial population at a time when such facilities were few.’ At one time it hosted a Physical Culture Club under the instruction of Sgt Major Bowler of the Sherwood Rangers, and even held a swimming club.
Ill health forced Rev Dobree to tender his resignation in 1908, and his retirement was marked by the commissioning and presentation of an illuminated address to Rev Dobree, illustrated with sketches of St John’s church and of a shepherd tending his flock by noted Worksop artist Charles E M Baldock. Rev and Mrs Dobree retired to Llandudno in North Wales, where Rev Dobree died in 1915. His body was brought back to the town where he had served his flock for so many years, and he was laid to rest in the churchyard of the Priory. George Dobree was the vicar of St John’s from 1872 until 1909. For almost forty years he led the newly formed parish of St John’s and established himself as a priest to all the people in his care.
Worshippers & Wardens
William and Walter Straw upheld the values of Edwardian England for their entire lives, despite seeing man walk on the moon and observing six monarchs appear and disappear from the coins that changed hands over the counter of the family grocery shop. For all of their adult lives they were devoted congregants of St John’s Church.
Brothers Benjamin and William Straw arrived in Worksop from their hometown of Sutton-in-Ashfield in 1886 and established themselves as Grocers & Seed Merchants. Their business prospered and in 1889 William bought his brother’s share of the business. Benjamin moved to Louth and married an Inn Keepers daughter. Just over the road from the Grocers and close to the market stood the well-established butcher’s shop of David Winks. David Winks’ daughter Florence was slightly older than William Straw and in 1896 they married at Worksop Priory. The couple lived above the shop and soon their family grew as first William junior was born in 1898, followed a year later by Walter, and finally by David who arrived in 1901. Sadly, David died aged 17 months and was buried in the new cemetery at the Priory.
The younger pair of Straw brothers grew, thrived, and attended Abbey Boys school, and later they would both catch the train each day to study at Retford Grammar school. Both brothers were conscripted and served in the Great War but came through safely. William Jr progressed to studying at Kings College, London and later became a lecturer at the City of London College. Walter became a Master Tea Blender and lectured at the County Technical College (now North Notts College) built in the grounds of Carlton House at the junction of Blyth and Carlton Roads.
In 1920 William senior bought an Edwardian semi-detached villa at 7 Blyth Grove. Improvements were made to the new home, with a scheme of fashionable redecoration to bring it right up to date. This scheme of updating was to be the last major alterations number 7 Blyth Grove experienced. By 1923 the new home was ready for the family to move in, although William Jr was by this time teaching in London. The move relocated the Straws into the Parish of St John’s. William senior died suddenly in 1932 while working in his allotment in the Gentleman’s Gardens off Park Street, near the family’s earlier home. Florence had her husband’s belongings kept just as he had left them, and this pattern of behaviour was continued by the brothers throughout their lifetimes.
However, change is inevitable, and Walter took over the running of the Seed Merchants & Grocers and life move on. In 1938 William left his teaching post in London and returned home to Worksop. Both brothers feature regularly in the sidesman’s rota at St John’s and were longstanding members of the Church Council. When Florence passed away in 1939, her funeral service took place at St. John’s prior to her burial in the family plot in the Priory churchyard.
The Straw family home at Blyth Grove is cared for by the National Trust is open seasonally to visitors and offers a rare picture of 1930s middle class life – for booking details see Mr Straw’s House | Nottinghamshire | National Trust. Evidence of William and Walter’s involvement at St. John’s can be seen in the House. For example, a photograph hangs next to the bed of William and Florence that shows the sanctuary of St John’s, prior to the 1932 changes to the Foljambe memorial reredos.
The brothers were stalwart members of St John’s Church, and William served as Church Warden in the 1950s. At times, their firmly held views could place them at odds with new ideas and changes that they felt were fanciful or contrary to the tradition of the 1662 Prayer Book. William was particularly resistant to anything ritualistic such as processions and candles or towards the less formal worship styles of the 1980 Alternative Service Book and its precursors. As traditionalists, the brothers were always smartly dressed for Sunday worship, wearing suits and bowler hats, and always sitting in ‘their’ regular pew. On Sunday afternoons a slightly less formal style was adopted, with the bowler hats being changed to homburgs for the weekly routine of a Sunday afternoon constitutional stroll to inspect the family properties ‘up town’ and then onwards to visit the family graves at The Priory. Monday morning would see them in their usual workaday garb of gaberdines and flat caps.
Walter’s rejection of modernity was not so absolute as his older brother’s. He did drive a motor vehicle, although it had to be kept away from Blyth Grove, and there are even photographs of him involved in the Worksop Archaeological Society’s digs wearing denim jeans!
William’s interest in history lead to him being an active member of the Worksop Library Museum and Borough Record Committee, and it was his intervention that saved the Worksop Torso (Arundel Marble) from destruction in the early 1960s. Later in that decade he brought his literary and historical skills further to the fore by researching and writing a History of St John’s Church to mark its centenary. Newer members of St John’s well remember meeting William in the years that followed its publication and being firmly pressed to purchase a copy of his book. For example, Jess recalls William attending Church Council meetings with a suitcase full of the books that he produced saying, “You will buy a copy of my book won’t you.” Needless to say, she bought one!
Piles of copies remained unsold at Blyth Grove upon the brothers’ deaths in 1976 (Walter) and 1990 (William). The book remains a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of St John’s and its community but also provides hints to the character of its author.
The church divides to grow
Just as in the 1860s a need was recognised for a new church to minister to the growing population in the north of Worksop: something similar happened in the 1970s and 80s. History thus repeated itself as a new church was built and St. John’s divided in two.
Just as in the 1860s a need was recognised for a new church to minister to the growing population in the north of Worksop: something similar happened in the 1970s and 80s. History thus repeated itself as a new church was built and St. John’s divided in two.
This time the population was growing and set to grow enormously over the next decades in the north of the town. The vicar of St John’s at that time, Canon Albert Brown, like his predecessor at Worksop Priory in the 1860s, was a man of vision and realised that the current parish of 20,000 would struggle to minister to that growth and a new church was needed. The only church presence in the area was a curate’s house on Westminster Close. The first step was to begin to plant a new congregation and in August 1976 the first service was held in the Prospect Prior Meadows Community Centre, (now demolished). Led by the curate with support from some existing church members this grew within a few years into a regular congregation of around 60.
A new building was beginning to be discussed and by 1983 the Parochial council of St John’s agreed to make plans. The project was taken forward not by a group of prominent citizens of the town but by different committees in the church, ordinary people with talents, experiences and in many cases simply willingness. It was the people who drove this forward and were prepared for the endless meetings!
As in the 1860s there were discussions with landowners – this time the council – and it was agreed that a multipurpose church building on the junction of Old and New Thievesdale Lanes would be a great benefit to an area starved of community provision. Southwell diocese backed the idea and in 1987 the diocese bought the land.
From then on came the challenge of raising the £250,000 to pay for the building. This time there were no benefactors like the Foljambe family and Joseph Garside: it was over to the congregation of St John’s and the fledgling Prospect congregation to raise that sum. It is a great tribute to their commitment and sacrificial generosity that the money came in. This time the architect was a local man and musical director at St John’s. Chris Moxon designed a modern octagonal building with a flexible multi-purpose worship area that could extend into a lounge with a kitchen and with a wing added on with other facilities.
This time there was no team of paid workmen: the project relied heavily on the help of volunteers in working parties supervised by the architect and a retired surveyor. Peter Pilsworth was a member of the congregation now meeting in the new council built Thievesdale Community Centre where the Prospect congregation had moved.
Every Saturday folk would arrive with spades and wheelbarrows and first the site was cleared, then foundations dug. Professionals were needed to erect the steel structure and then lay the stone foundation (taken from a wall at St John’s) and the bricks but the volunteers acted as labourers for the workmen then as painters and finishers of the interior.
Andrew Rutherford writes:
“I certainly had no specific skills, what I offered was what strength and energy I had and a willingness to do my bit. I really enjoyed working on the site. The heavy labour was satisfying and the fellowship with the other volunteers was good fun and has lasted over the years.”
On January 9th, 1993, Christ Church Centre was officially consecrated by the Bishop of Southwell as a daughter church. There were probably not the crowds of 1869 but the many gathered there rejoiced that God had provided so abundantly.
St John’s had put in money, practical help, and much prayer but it has also divided itself. Around half the congregation who lived in the north of the parish had moved to join the new congregation who had started in the Prospect Community Centre then moved to the Thievesdale Centre.
Christ Church has now come of age and is a thriving independent church that now also includes St Luke’s Shireoaks.
office.worksopstjohn@gmail.com
St John’s Church,
Overend Road,
Worksop,
Nottinghamshire,
S80 1QG