South Oxhey Baptist Church
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Then
In September 1952 the estate's main contractor, the Unit Construction Company, agreed to let the Baptists a builder's hut on this site for £54 a year. The stones of their own hall were laid on 27 September 1952, and the Baptist church on Gosforth Lane opened on 17 January 1953. A guest performed the opening, with the minister of Bushey Baptist Church, the Rev. Arthur Halden, present, and more than 300 people packed into the service that followed. The hall was 76 feet long and 29 feet wide, seated 225 adults and had no central heating. It was only meant to serve until a permanent church could be built. A resident remembers the first church as a cosy tin building with a corrugated roof, although Poor But Proud describes a hall with cavity walls. The church was registered for weddings on 15 February 1956, and the 1960s Ordnance Survey marks it here. Poor But Proud says the hall could not meet the needs of the growing church, and a plan for a bigger building in 1968 came to nothing. The church, a branch of Bushey Baptist Church until then, became independent in 1970. Later plans, in 1971 and 1991, also came to nothing.5,137,144,165,585,708,709
Now
The church is still active, in a building extended in 2010. Photographs of 2013 show its modernised front.
Mentioned in
- Oxhey Chapel: The 1963 appeal Before the Estate
- Building the Estate: Huts and temporary buildings Building the Estate
- Churches: The Methodist church, Prestwick Road Life on the Estate
Position from OpenStreetMap. See Sources and method.