CHURCH FOLLOWS FLOCK

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18593, 2 January 1935, Page 3

CHURCH FOLLOWS FLOCK

REMOVED STONE BY STONE

NOTABLE PLACE Ol

WORSHIP

LONDON, Nov. 17

For the first time in the history ol' the Church of England one of its most notable, places of worship bus been removed, stone by stone, to a new site several miles distant.

Thirty years ago, St. Andrew’s, in Wells street, near Oxford Circus, was one of the “fashionable” churches ol London. Every Sunday the broughams of Kensington'arid .Mayfair filled Wells street. King Edward and Queen Alexandra were often jn the congregation. Sairah Bernhardt, the actress, was married there. The music of St. Andrew's was of a high order. It had its own choir school, and Joseph Barnby, the famous composer, was for a time its organist. With its reredos of alabaster and with other fittings as elaborate. St. Andrew’s was one of the choicest specimens of ecclesiastical splendor according to the Victorian standard.

Changes in social custom gradually reduced the congregation to but a faithful remnant. These pious old-timers, however, were sufficiently jealous of the glories that had been as to appeal to the Privy Council against the closing of the church. The effort was vain, bill tlie faithful few were perhaps mollified when an undertaking was given that the church should be removed in its entirety to serve a- more populous district. ‘St. Andrew’s has now risen again at Kingsbury, one of the rapidly-growing-new suburbs of north-western London. The removal front Wells street to Kingsbury has been an expensive matter, but the cost was more than covered bv the price received for the site in Wells street.