City Mission: The story of London's Welsh
chapels
Huw Edwards
Y Lolfa £24.95
(978-1-847-71905-8)
Church Times Bookshop £22.45 (Use code
CT757 )
HUW EDWARDS has written a thorough and absorbing history of
Welsh churches in London. He tells the story from the arrival of
the first Welsh preachers, who in the 18th century lodged opposite
Lambeth Palace and celebrated St David's Day, to the dramatic rise
and decline of membership in the 20th century.
The drift from Wales of young people looking for work resulted
in the need for friendly places of worship. The first wave included
dairymen who set up their own businesses and, controversially,
worked on Sundays. Soon, big houses needed maids: the late Queen
Mother's housekeeper worshipped at the now closed Charing Cross
Road chapel. Department stores required assistants; so D. H. Evans,
who was a Baptist, and Peter Jones both supported chapel life.
Preachers were called from Wales to serve the exiles. David
Lloyd George's first public speech as Prime Minister was at the
Welsh Baptist Chapel near Oxford Circus, where membership was
hundreds strong and embraced several denominations.
The final chapter looks at the Anglican Welsh-speaking church in
London. The Welsh were given St Benet's by Queen Victoria after the
congregation had been forced out of St Etheldreda's by an allegedly
crooked solicitor. In 1898, the National Welsh Festival evensong
filled St Paul's Cathedral, but by 2000 it was at St Benet's with
just 80 people. There is some detail of disputes within the diocese
of London after the death in 2001 of the vicar Alfred Pryse
Hawkins, who left a tiny and mainly non-Welsh congregation. Within
a few years, Dewi Sant, the daughter church in Paddington, was
closed.
Many closed churches, including King's Cross Welsh Tabernacle,
are now in the hands of African congregations. The two chapels in
Holloway are now Lefebvrist and Greek Orthodox, while the one in
Hammersmith has become an Islamic centre.
But the Borough Chapel in Southwark Bridge Road, which planted
landmark missions, including King's Cross, survives like a part of
lost Wales. On the wall is a notice ordering passers-by to "commit
no nuisance". The Jewin Church in the City of London is today's
flagship, where the author and leading London Welsh-speakers such
as Ffion Hague defiantly gather at Christmas for a plygain
service.
Edwards has undertaken an honest study of traumatic change just
before memories and even records are lost. One of his conclusions,
having looked at the wider picture, is that earlier co-operation
and amalgamation would have been wise. Here are maybe difficult
lessons for Anglicans and Methodists still planning for a
future.
Leigh Hatts is a writer and an online journalist.