St Paul's Church And Sunday School

A Memory of Woodford Bridge.

I moved to Woodford Bridge when I was about 4 years old in 1949 and a few years later went regularly to Church and Sunday School at St Paul's Church for several years.  The Vicar at that time was Rev Philip Wright.  He was well known for his interesting collection of old farm and agricultural tools and had a small museum at his house.

My younger sister and I used to walk up the hill from our house at the bottom of Hazeleigh Gardens on Sunday afternoons and go to our respective classes in the rather dusty Church Hall - the children were divided up by age into several groups and I think we were also separated into boys and girls.  The youngest children were in a separate room off to the right, I seem to remember, and in the main hall would be more than one little circle of children with their teacher.  I seem to recall one of the Sunday School teachers was Miss Manby who I think lived in Stamford Close.  We had Bible stories and pictures to colour and were given colourful texts to use as bookmarks in our Bibles.  Even with several groups in the main hall, the majority of children were well enough behaved for it to be quite a civilised arrangement.

There were various highlights of the year, such as the annual Prize Giving and the Christmas Party, all of which were held in the Church Hall.  The prizes were always books with a lovely inscribed book plate inside the front cover.  I am  not sure how we qualified for a prize - perhaps it was good attendance or good behaviour, or remembering the Bible stories better than the other children in our class!  There was always a great big pile of books to be distributed by the Vicar so I think a lot of the children would have received a prize.

In the summer there would be a Sunday School Outing - I think it was always to Walton-on-the-Naze which wasn't the 'real' seaside but not far off and we used to look forward to that even though the weather was often wet and dreary.

Sometimes the Sunday school would meet in the Church, such as at Easter, and then the Vicar would talk to us.

Morning Service on Sundays followed the Book of Common Prayer and hymns were from 'Hymns Ancient and Modern'.  There was a small choir and psalms and canticles were sung to tunes that were sometimes a challenge to follow, but I enjoyed them when I got to know some of the tunes.  The small organ was at the back of the church then and I used to love it when the organist played 'Trumpet Voluntary' or something lively as we went out.

There was a Brownie Pack which also met in the Church Hall, which I joined rather later than my school friends so I didn't have enough time to earn the necessary badges by the time I went up to the Girl Guides to 'fly up' and had to be content to 'walk up'!  

The year of the Church's Centenary was 1954 and we all had to try to collect 100 coins for the church funds.  I am not sure whether it was 100 farthings or 100 sixpenny coins but it was quite hard to complete the task in those days of austerity. I think we had a card to record how our collection was growing; the forerunner of the 'Sponsored Walk /Swim etc'.

Looking at St Paul's website, I think a lot of things are very different today!


Added 13 April 2008

#221312

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