The Lent Factor by Graham James

Author:Graham James
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781408184165
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

John Loughborough Pearson

1 Peter 2.4–10

When I lived with my family in south London in the late 1980s and early 1990s we worshipped regularly at St Peter’s, Vauxhall. At the time, St Peter’s had a small congregation of widely different nationalities and backgrounds. Among the 30 or so communicants at the parish mass you would perhaps find a student from Cameroon, a family originally from Sri Lanka, Sisters of the Community of St John the Divine (now made famous through the television series Call the Midwife), one or two Jamaicans, a handful of locals who had lived all their lives in Vauxhall and a cabinet minister with a constituency in the Home Counties who was a regular worshipper. The diversity of the congregation expanded as the numbers gradually grew. It was a rewarding congregation to which to preach. It also provided some parochial reality given the rarefied atmosphere of working at Lambeth Palace at the time. The north Lambeth clergy were very welcoming to various clerical cuckoos in their nest. Over the years, Christopher Hill and Stephen Platten also ministered at St Peter’s while they worked for the Archbishop of Canterbury. All three of us later became diocesan bishops. St Peter’s comes to mind when pondering the needs of urban churches which face financial challenges or struggle to find lay people to do all the jobs which keep the Church going.

The architecture of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, soon cast a spell on me. Built in 1864, it was designed by John Loughborough Pearson. He had already created a number of other buildings in the Gothic style in the streets nearby. He was commissioned to do so by Robert Gregory, who became Rector of Lambeth in 1853. Shocked by the penury of his people, the new rector quickly opened a drawing school in the parish room. He followed this with a new school designed by Pearson and built on part of the old Vauxhall Gardens. An art school was soon added and gained great renown. A soup kitchen and a clothes workshop followed. Poor women were paid 1s 6d a day for making clothes. They were so proficient that the government army clothing department put in massive orders. In one year alone 100,000 shirts were produced as well as several thousand greatcoats. It was Robert Gregory’s vision to give the people of the parish paid work, to enhance their skills and education so that they might live a more elevated and purposeful life. Only then would they be able to glimpse the glory of God. He asked Pearson to build a suitable church for the people. It had to be a cheap church, but uplifting. Somehow St Peter’s, which cost £8,000, not a vast sum even then for a church built on its scale, succeeds in transporting worshippers into another world as soon as they enter the door, the gate of heaven.

St Peter’s is the first of Pearson’s churches to be vaulted throughout its entire length. He claimed to be able to produce a vault as cheaply as any ordinary roof.

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