ST. GERTRUDE’S, SOUTH CROYDON
1903 to 1953

St. Gertrude’s Church (minus the existing sanctuary and some thirty or forty feet at the other end) was opened in June, 1903. It is impossible to give exact dates as the extant notice books only begin in December, 1913. Financial details are even more hazy, as the only account books in the archives run from April, 1910, to the present day, except for a gap of more than six years from November, 1920, to February, 1927. It is known, however, that the original building (presumably including the presbytery) cost slightly under £3,000, provided from money left to the Diocese by the late Miss Frances Ellis.

The area to be served was contained within the following boundaries:

“NORTH. From a point on the east where the Borough Boundary cuts the Shirley Church Road, following the Boundary in a south-west direction until it cuts the Coombe Road, then west along the Coombe Road (both sides included), Lower Coombe Street, Duppas Hill Lane and Duppas Hill Road (both sides of all these roads excluded) to Waddon Station.

“WEST. From Waddon Station along the Stafford Road to Coldharbour Lane (now Purley Way) and along this Lane to the western end of Edgehill Road, thence along Hillcrest Road, Peaks Hill Road, Green Lane to Woodcote Lane.

“SOUTH. Along Woodcote Lane to the Brighton Road to a point opposite Old Lodge Lane, along Old Lodge Lane, Firs Road, Hayes Lane, past Kenley Station to the Godstone Road to the south-east end of Riddlesdown.

“EAST. From the south-east end of Riddlesdown, where the Union and District Council Boundary cuts the Godstone Road, follow this Boundary going north-east to Addington Lodge, then along Lodge Lane to Addington; from Addington follow Shirley Church Road to the point where it is cut by the Croydon Borough Boundary. N.B. – Where the boundary is said to follow a road, path, etc., it goes along the middle of the road, path etc., unless the contrary is stated.”

The mission was worked temporarily by Fr. O’Connor, O.F.M., as Fr. Albert Whereat,* who had been designated as the first rector, never took charge. The first real rector was Fr. Charles Turner* who officiated from June, 1904, until about the end of April, 1907, and was succeeded by Fr. Rudolph Bullesbach*, who erected the Stations of the Cross in January, 1910, and left in April, 1914. Then came Fr. John Torrance*, who remained during the war and was succeeded in October, 1920, by Fr. Edward Larkin. In the Synod of that year the Mission was raised to the dignity of a Parish.

Fr. Larkin added the sanctuary to St. Gertrude’s at a cost of £1,500 odd. He also, at a cost of £1,000, bought a site and built the beginning of a church at Selsdon, 1926-1927. The Hall, which has proved so great a boon, was his conception. Costing about £800, it was ready in November, 1926.

When Fr. Larkin left in February, 1927, Fr. Terence Leo Fichter* took his place till August 27th, 1930, Fr. William Alban Pritchard being appointed to succeed him on August 30th.

An assistant priest having become necessary, Fr. Francis Redaway* was appointed in June, 1914. His successors were Fr. William Curtin*, 1916-1919, Fr. Bernard Pearce*, 1919-1921, Fr. George Lynch-Staunton, 1921-1923, Fr. John Colley, 1923-1924, Fr. James O’Connell, 1924-1928, Fr. Herbert Loader, 1928-1930, Fr. Frank Ryan, 1930, Fr. Maurice Condon, 1930-1931, and Fr. Bernard Heaney*, 1931-1934.

By 1931 a second assistant was needed and Fr. Bernard Smoker came on October 5th of that year. He remained until November 1935. Fr. John Cremin was here from June 23rd 1934 to November 18th, 1936, Fr. Francis Little from then to September 1st, 1940, Fr. Paul Baker from September 1st, 1940 to early in the following year, Fr. Gerard Wall from June, 1942, to September 6th, 1943, and again from January 28th, 1946 to September, 1948, Fr.Charles Borelli from mid-1943 to the end of 1945, and Fr Cyril Hanrahan* from January, 1944 to June, 1946.

Besides these, special mention must be made of Fr. Thomas Travers, who was first curate from November, 1935 to June 9th, 1943. This period took in the Battle of Britain and the worst of the air-raids, during which time he courageously said Mass each Sunday at Waddon – one of the worst danger spots of the parish, being so very close to the aerodrome and industrial Croydon.

To finish the list – Fr. Colman Quinn came on September 1st, 1946, and Fr. Hubert Simes on September 25th, 1948.

The church and sacristy were extended and completed in October, 1935 at a cost of £2,943 plus nearly £1,000 for furnishings. This included the Baptistery, gallery, confessional and porch. The extension was blessed and formally opened by the late Bishop William F. Brown of Pella on November 15th, 1935.

In this month we presented the Croydon Corporation with a small piece of land to enable the rounding off of the very awkward junction of Wych Grove and Purley Road.

The High Altar and baldachino (immortalised by a photograph in Fr. J. O’Connell’s three volume work, “The Celebration of Mass”) were finished in December, 1936, at a cost of £360 odd, £150 of which was given by the late Frederick Fawdry, a generous – but anonymous – benefactor of the parish.

On Friday, June 25th, 1937, the feast of St. William, Abbot, our church was solemnly consecrated by Bishop Brown.

“Came the war” and with it, very early on Sunday, May 11th, 1941, a bomb in the next garden which was within an ace of blowing the church and presbytery to pieces. As it was, only the Epistle side of the church was badly damaged; the organ and organ gallery were destroyed. Two Masses were said before we were ordered to evacuate. Mass was said in St. Anne’s Convent Hall on the following three Sundays until patching-up operations had rendered the church safe for use again.

But it was not till Easter Sunday, March 25th, 1951, that the war damage had been repaired and the whole church was once more available. The bombed organ gallery was not rebuilt but was replaced by a large window which considerable improved both the lighting and the appearance of the church. The total cost of the repairs, incidental decorations, a new confessional, and a new heating boiler and oil-burning installation was £5,960, and of the Compton organ £1,150.

Turning now to developments:

A landmark was the opening on September 12th, 1909, by six nuns of the Ladies of Mary, of St. Anne’s Convent, Sanderstead, for use as a school for girls. On the following Friday and Saturday Kensitite protest meetings entitled “Why I object to convent schools” were held in front of the convent, the speaker attacking the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lady and Confession! Nevertheless the school was duly opened on the 20th with nine pupils. Holy Mass was said for the first time in Sanderstead for 300 years on Christmas Eve, 1909, in the convent chapel. There were twenty people present, one of whom had not been to the Sacraments for thirty years.

A year after the opening the number of pupils had grown to thirty-three. In 1919, St. Anne’s was recognised by the Board of Education as a secondary school. With numbers constantly increasing, a new wing was added in 1924. A kindergarten was built and later enlarged. By the fifties it was a flourishing school of 700 pupils, but progress eventually caught up with it and St Anne’s was demolished to make way for the housing scheme that stands on the site today. The pupils were transferred to Coloma as Kate Payne remembers…

The chapel at Selsdon (dedicated to St. Columba) referred to above and completed in July, 1927, was enlarged to accommodate another sixty people in April, 1938, and in October of the same year a resident priest was appointed, thus relieving South Croydon of a large and rapidly developing area.

In June, 1931, The Gables – a fair-sized house with large grounds in Dale Road, Purley – was bought for £2,750. Mass was said there for the first time on Sunday, September 13th. The congregation grew so rapidly that the Bishop felt justified in making it a separate mission and appointed Fr. Eugene Cotter as the first rector. He took over in February, 1934 and by 1939 had built a permanent church dedicated to St. John the Baptist.

On April 2nd, 1933, Mass was said for the first time at Waddon in the Council School hired for the purpose. This was due to the initiative of Fr. Smoker and proved so necessary that a second Mass was added on the following July 29th. In February, 1939, “Bramley Hill Side”, Haling Park Road, was bought for £2,200. The property extended to Violet Lane, Waddon, where it was intended to put up a church. A contract for the building of a temporary chapel had been signed, when war broke out and the contractors had to rescind the agreement. Nothing could be done till 1948 when the present building, dedicated to St. Dominic, was finished. The cost was about £1,000, including all the incidental work. The first Mass was said on December 19th. In 1951 the building was extended (at a cost of nearly £500), as the attendance at Mass had grown to well over 200.

Owing to the difficulty of transport during the war, it became necessary to provide Sunday Mass for the people of upper Sanderstead, and the late Miss Elizabeth Richardson (then a Protestant, although she became a Catholic some years later) very generously volunteered to lend her schoolroom at “The Skep” in Limpsfield Road for the purpose. Mass was said there for the first time on November 8th, 1942, with a congregation of forty-one. Largely owing to Fr. Hanrahan’s insistence, Mass was continued after the end of the war in May, 1945, and a second Mass was added from November 14th of that year. It was Fr. Hanrahan who urged the purchase of the Skep when Miss Richardson left. The property was bought for £4,000 in March, 1946, and the whole amount was paid off by the end of July, 1950. Less than a year later – on February 19th, 1951, the Bishop appointed the late Fr. Michael Moriarty to be the first resident priest of the new mission, to be known as “The Holy Family”.

From the point of view of the antiquarian, the Church of the Holy Family is of interest. Part of the building is almost certainly nearly 200 years old – an old stone in the face of one wall of the house gives a weather-worn date in the seventeen-hundreds. The portion of the fabric now used as the Church was for the two generations or more a blacksmiths and wheelwrights’ shop, and the kitchen was in old times used as a small brew-house for the refreshment of the few scattered inhabitants, principally farmers and cottagers, who then lived at Sanderstead.

For many years the lack of a Catholic elementary school had been a drawback and a menace, causing many children to drift from the Church. The beginning of a remedy for this was the purchase in June, 1951, for £4,600, of a large house and grounds at 68, St. Augustine’s Avenue, for use as an elementary school for children from five to eleven years of age. This was opened under the title of “Regina Coeli” on Tuesday, September 14th, with nearly fifty children under eight years old. Numbers steadily rose and when the school reopened after the Summer holidays of 1952 (by which time the necessary alterations had been completed), there were 164 pupils from five to eleven years of age in attendance.

There still remained the urgent problem of the “over elevens”. A promising solution to this was provided by the purchase by the Diocese, as from April 20th, 1953, at a cost of £9,350, of the large house and extensive grounds in Pampisford Road known as Kendra Hall, to be used as a secondary modern school. Much remains to be done before it gets fully into its stride, but already there are two classes in being, besides two more to accommodate the overflow from Regina Coeli.

In so short an account it is obviously impossible to pay individual tribute to the numbers of – one might almost say the “numberless” – living parishioners who, by their unselfish giving, not only of money, but still more of their time and labour and prayers, have made so wonderful a development possible. The priests of the parish know them and honour them and pray for them. There surely never was and never will be a more loyal and devoted and co-operative body of people. May God bless them

* R.I.P.