1881-1939
S. Michael, Camden Town

As well as securing the building in the period, the parish grew in size to 8,000 people, and the community constantly expanded what it did. Contemporaries were clear about which was their greatest achievement. An account of the early years, published in the parish magazine in 1923, spends most of its time talking about the building, the donations and the inscriptions around them. The people and the community merit little attention. To modern eyes, it is the latter that is most striking.

Recorded in the first Parish Magazine of 1884, one of the earliest services in the new nave had been a Thanksgiving Service on 11 December 1883 for the recovery of seventy-two people in the parish from an outbreak of typhoid fever – they all attended the service and all seventy-two names were read out. Nearly a hundred people had been struck with the disease in the parish that autumn and so Fr Penfold had appealed for funds, receiving £80 from friends and others in response to an appeal in the Daily Telegraph. He also requested help from the Nursing Sisters of St John the Divine ³.

That body was an Anglican religious community originally founded as St John’s House in 1848 and re-founded in 1883 when all its Sisters and most of its nurses resigned from King’s College Hospital over a quarrel between the Sister-Matron and the hospital’s medical staff. The same community later became the inspiration for the Order of St Raymond Nonnatus in the BBC hit series Call The Midwife. The Community sent two nursing sisters, who worked for six weeks with members of the congregation to make daily visits to every known case of typhoid in the parish. Beef tea and ‘dinners’ were provided for the sick and the doctors involved rather surprisingly prescribed a daily intake of wine and brandy, generously supplied by two local wine merchants. After the patients were better some were sent away to the seaside to regain their health, cared for by Fr Penfold and their fellow parishioners.

Even before the Mission Buildings were completed in 1888, several evangelistic Missions to the parish took place. The first was in 1885 when the parish was visited by three of Penfold’s near-contemporaries among high-church clergy – Richard Rhodes Bristow (1838-1914), vicar of St Stephen’s Lewisham and later Canon of Southwark Cathedral, George Octavius Fletcher Griffith (1847-1913), vicar of St Barnabas’ Beckenham, Kent and Henry Russell Wakefield (1854-1933), vicar of St Michael’s, Lower Sydenham and later second Bishop of Birmingham. The three men undertook many tasks in ten days of intense activity – Holy Communion was held twice a day with a meditation between. The church also hosted services for intercessory prayer, a Mission service every night with a meeting afterwards, short addresses at midday, Bible readings, and addresses to men only, to shop assistants, servants, mothers, young women and children. Factories were visited and, where possible, addresses given to the workmen. Visits were made to the sick and dying at home and daily visits were also made to the new North West London Hospital, where several services were also held – it was just behind the church on Kentish Town Road and had only opened in 1878. Holy Communion was given to the sick and infants were baptised. At the conclusion of the Mission a closing service was held at which memorials were distributed to those who had made resolutions for spiritual progress or taken on a definite role in parish life.

The parish had an initial population of 5,000, enlarged in 1904 by the addition of 3,000 people from St Mark’s Regent Park parish next door. Estimating numbers for the congregation as a whole is difficult, but the first decade showed very rapid growth. Annual reports from the early years suggest that congregations were initially very small, though much swelled at Easter. In 1879 the weekly congregation was twenty two, and over fifty at Easter. ⁴ However, by the 1880s far larger numbers were recorded. Part of that growth was simply a result of natural population growth. The marriage and baptismal registers record a huge number of baptisms – through the 1880s and into the 1900s, around 100 children a year were baptised in St Michael’s – 20 were baptised in May 1884 alone and this is far from atypical. ⁵ They also show a high number of late marriages and of children in the same family baptised on the same day – Fr. Penfold and his Missioners aimed to visit every home in the parish and the registers quite possibly indicate that they urged their new parishioners to marry in the new church and baptise their children too.

Further Missions must also have helped with numbers. One occurred in February 1895, again lasting ten days and again led by a three-man team – the Rev William Isaac Carr Smith (1857-1930), who that October sailed to be rector of St James’s, Sydney, Australia, the Rev Edward Stanley Carpenter (1854-1934), vicar of Highcliffe, Hampshire and Brother Ellard, a member of the Lichfield Lay Evangelist Brotherhood (a group of lay preachers set up in 1882 by William Maclagan, Bishop of Lichfield and based in Wolverhampton since 1892). It included outdoor processions led by robed crucifer, clergy and choir, but bad weather meant that (in the words of the 1923 History) “congregations … though good, were not so large as had been hoped for”. The 1923 History added that “the earnest words of invitation addressed at different points by the Missioners were instrumental in bringing in some who seldom, if ever, had been to Church before”. The parish’s Mission Buildings hosted a Church Army Mission under Captain Carter and Nurse Jennett from 10 to 18 March 1901.

Another ten-day mission in November 1906 was well-attended – the “very wet weather [at the time] … ceased in a most providential manner during the outdoor processions each night”, in the words of the 1923 History, which continued:

This third Mission was conducted by Fr Fitzgerald and Fr Murray, both of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield, assisted by the Rev Charles Leonard Weatherburn (1870-1954), who had just become curate and priest-in-charge of the mission church of St Mark’s, Jarrow in north-east England. Fr Fitzgerald returned for a week in November 1908, holding an intercessory service each morning and an address and an instruction each night.

By the mid 1880s, congregations numbered fifty, with those attending at Easter over 200. By 1880, this rose to around 300. ⁶ After this, the size of the Easter congregations seem to have reached a plateau. In 1904, Easter attendance was 233, well below the 307 recorded in 1890. However, other indications suggest that the church community had grown. Certainly, the clergy believed the minimum number attending at Easter in the early 1900s ought to be 400. ⁷ A better indication of the size of the community is perhaps shown by the Parish Magazine, which was sold, and thus suggests an even greater commitment than attending an Easter service. Its print run was 280 in 1903 and grew in increments to 600 by 1911. ⁸ The community at St Michael’s seems to have continued to grow throughout this period. It also remained engaged in issues in the wider church, especially the campaign against Welsh Disestablishment. Committees were formed to support that campaign in 1895, but the campaign eventually proved unsuccessful – at its climax in 1912 the parish magazine interpreted the failure as evidence that ‘once more the devil and his human agents have started an open warfare against God’s Church.’ ⁹

St Michael’s also recruited its choirboys fairly locally. One was George John Dowsett (1870-1887), the son of a journeyman printer-compositor who was living at 23 Phoenix Street in Somers Town in 1871 but had moved his family to 41 Kentish Town Road by 1881 and 181 Great College Street by 1901. Another was George Rolfe Hoddy (1872-1892), one of eight children born to a Post Office overseer who was living at 141 Bayham Street in 1881. Hoddy and Dowsett were both born in the St Pancras district and were both buried in the St Michael’s Parish plot at Finchley Cemetery, a few yards from the cemetery chapel, close to the right-hand side of the road. The plot is headed by a marble cross, whose base is inscribed with the names of the two choirboys and of Alice Edith Ford (1871-1890), one of the church’s regular communicants.

Despite the numerical growth, the clergy were often disappointed with their congregation’s attendance, not just at Easter, but also at other services, such as the daily morning eucharist begun on 1 November 1887 and still running in 1923 (previously Holy Communion had only been celebrated on Sundays, Holy Days, Tuesdays and Thursdays). They repeatedly complain that people only come to church to be married, christened and die. In the same Parish Magazine, they complain about their behaviour at weddings, specifically ‘the profane habit of throwing or scattering confetti or rice either in or immediately outside the church’ which ‘should be given up by all those who respect the House of God and their own Christian profession.’ ¹⁰ There are similar complaints that attendance at weekly Masses is poor – in 1904, the Vicar deplored the failure of people to come to church for the daily Eucharist, with only 5 or 6 people usually present. ¹¹ This is not surprising, the number of Masses was high and the congregation must have been stretched thin. There are daily Masses, and five services on the Sunday. In particular, it was male attendance that bothered the clergy. The Priests bemoaned the lack of men at the Parish gathering and allowed mixed seating within the church in 1886, whilst retaining some women-only areas¹². The parish also undertook a five-day Mission to Men in April 1888 under the leadership of E. V. Burridge – he died aged only thirty-nine the following year and the 1890 north aisle window of St Boniface is in memory of him. However, despite all these efforts, the lack of men persisted. Throughout this period, although women dominated the congregation in numbers and were present throughout the church’s wide range of activities, they could not serve on the church council. Only in 1923 were the first women elected.

Even before the erection of the iron church, the community had operated through any number of associations and clubs. The earliest societies – the Penny Bank, Coal and Clothing Clubs and the Maternity Society – were established in the late 1870s. ¹³ From 1881 their proliferation accelerated. Every year, almost every month, the church records new societies starting under the auspices of the church. Parochial events and entertainments initially took place in the Mission House at 5A Camden Road until the parish moved out in 1883. Following the nave’s completion, such events moved to a temporary room built at a cost of £140 close to the present site of the Resurrection Chapel and accessed either via the small door in the nave wall outside the chapel or via an external door. That room was opened on 25th January 1885 by Lady Maud Caroline Hamilton (1846-1938), wife of Lord George Francis Hamilton (1845-1927), Conservative MP for Middlesex and Ealing, First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State for India. According to the 1923 history she had been “for many years a very good friend of St Michael’s, and until quite recently a regular visitor at the Monday Mothers’ Meetings”. From 1915 to its dissolution in 1923 she was also the final president of the Parochial Mission-Women’s Association, intended to provide working-class ‘mission women’ to provide tuition for each parish – St Michael’s was one parish which benefited from the Association’s work.

The walls and roof of the new room were made of corrugated iron – the 1923 History refers to the “dripping reminiscences for those who rubbed their arms against them during a crowded entertainment or after a frost”. The new room immediately started to be used for choir practices, Confirmation classes, Guild meetings, Bible Classes, Mothers’ meetings, temperance meetings and teachers’ meetings. However, it was not big enough and so Fr Penfold raised funds to construct a larger purpose-built set of Mission Buildings in Camden Town. The 1923 Church History reports on the fundraising ’great Bazaar’ held on 9th May 1887. It was opened by Queen Victoria’s daughter HRH Princess Christian, who was given an address of welcome read by senior choir boy George Hoddy, and given flowers by ‘one of the Sunday School girls’. The royal party, clergy and parishioners were joined at the two-day event by numerous well-wishers including Lady Maud Hamilton and Lady Janetta Manners, wife of the future Duke of Rutland. All were treated to ‘two recitations’ by Madge Kendall, a famous actress, and a monologue by ‘the great comedian’ J.L. Toole entitled ‘Trying a Magistrate’. The sum of £350 was raised despite paying ‘somewhat heavy expenses’ for the impressive and very high profile event Fr Penfold had arranged.

The Mission Buildings were built at the junction of York Street and York Place (now Greenland Place) – their site is marked 3 on the map above, with the church’s site as 1 and 5a Camden Road as 2. Given its late 19th-century Gothic style, the architectural historian Pevsner theorised that they might have been designed by the same architects as St. Michael’s itself, Bodley and Garner¹⁴, but the 1923 History states it was the church architect “Lacey Ridge”. St Michael’s certainly seems to have attracted architects – as well as Bodley, Hare and Ridge, the 1923 History states that Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912) was “at one time closely connected with St Michael’s” and that the “best white cope and the red altar frontal were given” in his his memory – no concrete link can yet be proven other than his 1896 design for Kentish Town Police Station.

The buildings were officially opened with great ceremony and celebrations in 1888 by HRH Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck and grand-daughter of George III. It was still a noteworthy building ten years later – one of Charles Booth’s Police Notebooks from 14 November 1898 mentioned “the new Mission Room of St Michael’s” but mistook its age, stating it had been “built 4 or 5 years ago.” ¹⁵ In 2001 Fr Penfold’s grand Mission Buildings were largely demolished and the Spectrum Centre built on the partially retained and still visible walls of the old St. Michael’s Mission Hall.^{16 17}

C H Challen presented a piano to the Mission Buildings, which was still in use in 1923, and Mr Marsh was appointed the first caretaker, holding the position for sixteen years. There the church organised an enormous number of activities: ‘Industrial exhibitions, Concerts, Social Gatherings, Temperance Meetings, Soup Kitchen, Men’s Benefit Society, Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, Savings Bank, Clothing Clubs, Mothers’ Meetings, not to mention Sunday Schools’. To take another example from 1904, the Parish Magazine records Parochial Missionary Associations, a Slate club, Sunday Schools, Infant Schools, Bible Classes (three weekly), three Temperance societies, a Girls’ Friendly Society, a Men’s Club, a Boys’ Club, Mothers Meetings, Nurses Guild, Parish Library, a Debating Society and a variety of Sports teams (football in the winter, cricket in the summer). ⁶

Some of these are clearly religiously inspired, both perennial, like Bible study, but also reflective of the movements of the time. The remit of the church’s activities was wider than these specifically religious aspects, whoever, with many of its activities meeting more general social and community needs, such as participation in the temperance movement. This was a live issue in Camden Town at that time, as reported by Charles Booth or one of his researchers during his tour of part of the parish on 28 October 1898 under police escort:

Other local agencies, churches and chapels were also active in the movement – Milton Hall at the parish’s north end was a temperance meeting hall, just behind a brewey located by Hawley Lock. However, St Michael’s also became very much caught up in it. In 1885 we hear that the children had exams in temperance – fortunately for the youth of St Michael’s, they won multiple prizes ²⁰. In 1896 Penfold called the parish’s temperance endeavours “very successful” but his interviewer also noted his comments that “As to DRINK he really could not say whether habits of excess appeared to be on the increase or not”. In February 1912 the parish even shipped in the vicar of Winnipeg, Canada, the Rev Edmund Charles Radiger Pritchard, to lead a Temperance Mission – one of its secondary aims was “arousing deeper interest in the work of the Church abroad”.

This was not the only social evil Penfold reported in the parish, particularly on Camden Road:

Another example of the wider social work of St Michael’s was its library, established in 1886. This was not specifically religious, but offered a broad service. The following year, the organisers called for more donations of ‘story books’ to reflect demand. ²² Similarly, the detailed reports following of the parish sports teams may be laudable, but reflects the strength of the community, not their spiritual efficacy.

Penfold’s obituary in the Church Times later read:

“Gradually, with much prayer, and with the infinite pains which he lavished on whatever he set his hand to, … [he] built up, in that north-west district of London, a congregation that was no less remarkable for its internal harmony, than for the reverent tone and self-restrained ritual which were just a reflex of the mind and character of its parish priest. Guilds of communicants and churchworkers, instinct with reality, loyal to the best tenets of the Anglican Communion, gathered about St. Michael’s. Admirable school buildings were built and opened. Everything evidenced quiet, healthy, Catholic life.”²³

The Sunday Schools were an early innovation, dating to 1877 and predating the Mission Buildings – the first assistant priest A.G. Hunter wrote about his early years in the parish in 1935:

In Aves’ interview and questionnaire, Penfold stated that most of the forty Sunday School teachers at that date were “those who have gone through the Schools” and that attendance was “good”, reaching “Infants, 221; Boys, 121’ Girls, 201”, besides 97 adults in Bible Classes.²⁵

Hunter also included in his biography an anecdote about one of the Sunday School pupils:

Edward Penfold continued to lead the church until 1903, initially working alone, then working with a voluntary assistant priest and a congregation of around twenty people. Penfold was vicar of St Michael’s for 27 years and it was the main project of his life. In the early years, he seems to have dominated church life. It is he who makes the executive decision to build a temporary church room at the back, seemingly without consultation; when needed, he simply secures a new organist through his friends. ³¹ He was also made Rural Dean of St Pancras in 1894.

One of Charles Booth’s researchers Ernest Aves interviewed Penfold at St Michael’s Vicarage on 21 November 1896. Aves had previously worked at the university settlement of Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, where graduates lived among the working class population – this gives extra weight to his admiration for Penfold:

After A.G. Hunter‘s departure in 1882, Penfold was supported by a range of number of assistant priests – initially a single curate (J. Dixon and then H. J. Sharp), but from 1885, a pair of curates was more usual. Most curates served short tenures, two or three years. They lived together in the parish, and moved several times to try to find the right accommodation. They initially lived at 10, Gloucester Crescent, and then in Bayham Street to be closer to the people. ³⁴ These priests seem to have run a punishing schedule, leading services, community activities work with the community. The Parish Magazines do record their attempts to restrict access to them from parishioners outside specific hours. ³⁵ Nor were they immune to the appeal of vestments. They write in 1891 ‘we received a very liberal and acceptable present at Easter – a set of new surplices for the boys.’ ³⁶

Assistant clergy may not have spent long at St Michael’s, but they certainly moved on rapidly and well. J. Dixon (1881-83) became Vicar of Willesden, V. L. Keelan (1904-11) was appointed to the new parish of St Michael’s Golders Green (now the Orthodox Cathedral of Holy Trinity and St Michael) – St Michael’s Camden Town sent a choir to its dedication service³⁷. F. W. Osborn (1862-1951), later Penfold’s successor, was curate 1891-95³⁸, then Vice-Principal of Ely Theological College before returning in 1903³⁹.

Some of the clergy went a very long way after St Michael’s. J. W. Williams (curate 1890-91) left for Cape Town and eventually became Bishop of St John’s, Kaffraria. ⁴⁰ Empire saturates the discussions of the church, and its clergy. In 1908 T. H. Kett (curate 1903-20) took a seven-month holiday chaplaincy at Roodeport in the Transvaal, where he met three of his siblings for the first time since their emigration twenty-five years before. ⁴¹ E. H. P. Carter (curate 1885-90) ‘worked in West Bromwich and Ceylon’ before coming to St Michael’s. He subsequently also went to Africa and worked in Zululand. ⁴² It is impossible not to be aware of the breadth of the British Empire and the impact this had on clerical careers.

The Empire also animated the parish as a whole. They kept in touch with Williams in South Africa, from where he wrote numerous letters about the local population and where the parish sent gifts, including ‘another parcel of fifteen frocks has been sent to him from St. Michael’s for the children of his kafir mission.’ ⁴³ For some years, the parish funded an ‘African Child’ in Central Africa, who was reportedly very good at Holy Scripture, but ‘not very sweet in her intercourse with her companions.’ ⁴⁴ The church often hosted lectures by visiting colonial dignitaries such as that in 1913 by Wilmot Vyvyan, Bishop of Zululand⁴⁵. The Rev Edmund Charles Radiger Pritchard, vicar of St Cuthbert’s, Winnipeg, Canada led the parish’s Temperance Mission from 3 to 7 February 1912 – one of that Mission’s secondary aims was stated by the 1923 History as “arousing deeper interest in the work of the Church abroad”.

The parish magazines also featured regular reports on the Anglo-Catholic Universities’ Mission to Central Africa. ⁴⁶, whilst St Michael’s as a whole aimed to spend 10% of giving to overseas aid. Less pacifically, the church also supported a collection for ‘all those engaged in the [Boer] War, for the wounded and the dying.’ ⁴⁷ Those wounded and dying included the server George Roberts, who died of enteric fever aged 20 during the campaign whilst serving with the City Imperial Volunteers. On 17th May 1901 a memorial tablet to him was erected in the south-west corner of the church, beside his usual seat – it can still be seen. ⁴⁸

The writings of the parish suggest a community that was large, confident, and open to the world. It is no surprise that in 1914, the same Magazines were the place where practical details of the outbreak of war and what must be done were also recorded.