Churches — CFFC

For this week’s Fun Foto Challenge Dan would like to see churches. Churches come in all shapes and sizes as we shall find and in our modern world are often given over to different uses as the numbers of the faithful dwindle.

Lets start with a Tin Tabernacle. These were cheap prefabricated buildings that could be quickly erected to provide places of worship where none existed. This is Shaftesbury Hall which was built close to Bowes Park station as a Baptist chapel for the railway workers in 1885…

…The Samaritans, a UK charity providing emotional support for people in distress, bought the building in 2011. This photo is from 2012. There is a photo of the building minus its roof in 2017 on Wikipedia. Looking at it on Google Maps I see it has been refurbished with a modern skin and roof and now carries the name Shaftesbury Community Hall.

Churches were often built in the centre of communities before housing completely took over the area. This is Holy Trinity, Dartford…

…An imposing presence at the end of the pedestrianised High Street.

Modern housing estates will often include space for a church or chapel. This is The Church of The Nazarene on the Winstanley Estate next to Clapham Junction Station…

…An import from the US I believe 😅 But linked to Wesleyan Methodist tradition. Here is Hanwell Methodist Church…

Here’s a very untraditional design of church – St Pauls Anglican Church in Harringay…

…I understand the triangular design of the roof represents the Trinity.

Another unusual church I have photographed is the Église Notre Dame des Anges which sits half in the waters of the harbour at Collioure…

…If you guessed that the tower was originally built as a beacon for the port you’d be right! It’s Medieval in origin while the church was built as an add-on between 1684 and 1690.

Finchley has its churches. My local is Holy Trinity on Church Lane in East Finchley where I was Christened and got Married…

…It was built in 1846 to a design by local architect Anthony Salvin to provide a place of worship for the godless inhabitants of East Finchley which had become something of a den of iniquity with prize fighting and other activities that the Victorian Church of England did not approve of. Until that point Finchley only had one church, St Mary’s, located in Finchley itself – over 1.5 miles away from the market area of East Finchley and those who went to church on a Sunday had to walk all the way there through the fields along Long Lane, which explains why it has that name 😅 Finchley Central, as it is now called, is usually referred to as Church End by locals for this reason. I wrote a detailed post about Finchley’s oldest church some time back which you may want to read.

The Uk has many old churches – This is the Church of The Holy Cross in Greenford…

…Ealing Council’s website gives the following information – “The church dates from around 1157 AD, but the earliest remaining parts of the building are as recent as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The porch on the south side of the church dates from about 1500, whilst the wooden tower dates from the sixteenth century. The exterior walls are faced with rather more modern nineteenth century flint.” This is now a Grade 1 listed building, so when population growth in the area demanded a bigger building, they built a new church alongside!…

…Also called Holy Cross. The old church was still available for weddings when I visited 😎

I hope you have found my selection of churches in this post of interest and that you found time to read my post about Finchley’s original church.👍