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St John With Holy Trinity, |
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St John With Holy Trinity, |
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Welcome to Holy TrinityHoly Trinity worships in what was once a Victorian mission hall in the middle of the Orchard estate near Elverson Rd Docklands Light Railway. A dual purpose building, it hosts activities run by the Quaggy Development Trust (QDT), a community project set up by the church about 10 years ago. Church members are actively involved in QDT and other community activities, including outreach to a new residential home for older people. Worship on Sundays is now at 9am - with breakfast! |
The presentation stone of the HTC (facing the road side) is inscribed MISSION ROOM PRESENTED TO HOLY TRINITY GREENWICH CHRISTMAS 1879 . The identity of the building as a mission room is important historically and today. It was founded essentially for the Sunday schools and children s work of the parish of Holy Trinity and its daughter church, Emmanuel. At one time up to 50 Sunday School teachers used to come down from St Michael s Blackheath to teach up to 200 boys at the HTC and 200 girls and infants at Emmanuel Church!
Many other activities have taken place over the years including Band of Hope, Bible Classes, work with the elderly, Youth Clubs, Church Lads Brigade, Women s Fellowship Meetings . In fact, it has been a place of women in ministry for a long time. The archives reveal that during WWI Deaconess Shott cooked meals which children took to the sick and injured - an early example of Meals on Wheels!! Whereas both Holy Trinity Church itself and the daughter church Emmanuel were destroyed in WWII, the parish mission hall escaped with minor damage. After the war, the parish was united with St Paul s Greenwich and so the HTC came within its remit. St Paul s itself was closed in 1984, when the HTC was added to the parish of St John s, Lewisham Way.
It was shortly after that a London City Mission family, David and Chris Whyte came to live at the adjoining house, 3 Orchard Hill, which once used to be a working men s club. The HTC was refurbished and was rededicated on 11 March 1992 with a service of thanksgiving led by Peter Hall, then bishop of Woolwich and the co-founder, with his wife, of Unlock. David and Chris had a big vision for evangelism and children s work and the congregation did grow under their direction. Later, inspired by the vision of the parish s then new American Vicar, April Keech (quite a character!), the HTC founded the Orchard Community Project to ensure that the HTC would be a meeting place for young people, children, the elderly and all members of the community living on the neighbouring Coldbath and Orchard Estates. With funding from the Church Urban Fund the OCP employed a Development Worker and soon many new activities and projects were underway. One of the first summer projects was the creation of the Community Garden which you can see outside. The garden is maintained every Saturday morning by church and community members.
Many of the activities which began under the OCP continue today. The Diamonds group for 50+ folks, the Eye View Neighbourhood watch, links with Morden Mount School at the top of the hill, Keep Fit classes and local councillor s surgeries. After the project successfully obtained SRB (Single Regeneration Budget) funding in 2001, it launched the Quaggy carnival (named after the small tidal tributary of the Thames which runs down from Deptford Creek). Soon after it was felt that the OCP needed to come of age and become an independent charity, so the Quaggy Development Trust (QDT) was founded. One of its major achievements to date is the children s nursery at the top of the hill, a wooden prefabricated structure which was dropped in by a crane!!!
Of course, the church continues to meet Sunday by Sunday, with a kids Sunday club and a cr che. We often join St John s for special occasions. We also meet to pray together every Tuesday lunchtime, a group called Breathing Space .
The Jesus is Lord sign and the cross, from the Whyte era, have both been recently restored. We would hope also to redevelop the interior, for example, replacing the now-worn floor.
The building is a multi-purpose resource for the congregation and for the community development trust, and any future development would be a partnership with QDT. This partnership is still developing but it presents many exciting opportunities for outreach to the estates. An event for One World Week, which focussed (through the media of rap, poetry, song, drama and story-telling) on creation, redemption and Jesus return (quite comprehensive then!) was a great success, and enabled some people to think seriously about Jesus for perhaps the first time.
The event above was organised in partnership not only with QDT but also with the church of the Ascension. At the time of writing a decision is pending about creating a CofE team ministry across the two parishes to enable joined-up mission on the estates on either side of the main road (Lewisham Rd) at the top of the hill. Please pray for the proposed appointment of a team vicar, that God would guide us to the person with a desire to reach these communities with the good news of the kingdom/reign of God.
** Many, many thanks to Jean Malyon, a long standing church member, for supplying me with information! (Matt Prior, curate)
