SACRIFICE TO PETROL

Evening Star, Issue 20995, 8 January 1932, Page 1

SACRIFICE TO PETROL

CHURCH BECOMES GARAGE

BUILDING’S VARIED CAREER. A church, an. army billet; an aeroplane works; a.garage—that is, in brief, the remarkable history of a church in England that was ruined by petrol. In the spacious days of the last century the citizens of Sunbury, in the Thames Valley, walked every Sunday to the church on the edge of Sunbury Common. Unaware of the impending motor car, they had built it by'the side of the long, straight highway running between Staines and Kingston. When the first motor car went snorting past, it heralded the doom of Sunbury Common Church. By 1913 the noise of the traffic had become so intolerable and the'dust such a nuisance that it wns with difficulty that the service could be conducted, and so the _ church was closed and a new one built in a quieter spot. Since then the old church has been put to some remarkable uses, and has now reached a new phase in its career by its into a “ quick service ” motor repair depot. During the war it was taken over by the Army authorities and used as a billet, and later it became a factory where aeroplane parts were made. Then a petrol pump appeared at the .porch, and for some years the needs of the motor car were ministered to there. A ‘ Morning Post ’ representative who visited the church recently found that it presented a strange appearance in its latest guise of a motor repair depot. Between the transepts is a steel girder supporting an overhead crane, while in the chequered light shed by the stained glass windows mechanics work at benches htted into the recesses in the walls. A chain slung over one of the wooden arches held up the front axle of a car being repaired. On the outside of the roof the, names of a bottled milk and a brand of petrol painted in large white letters claim the attention of the hurrying stream of traffic 'which flows almost ceaselessly past.