As my good friend Ric observed: ‘Spring always delivers!’ Daffodils are everywhere just now, looking beautiful and heralding Spring. So here’s another crop of ‘churches with daffodils’; I love it that these seasonal blooms don’t need any attention, they just ‘spring’ into life when the days get longer.

St Margaret of Antioch

This photo was taken over a month ago, in February half-term break, and already the daffs are looking good! St Margaret’s is the Abbey Church of Barking Abbey which I visited for last month’s post. The church dates back to 1215 and has served the ancient town of Barking as a centre of worship, education and community for eight centuries. As I mentioned last month, the Abbey was mostly destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries of the 1530s but the church itself survived as by then it was a Parish church. I’m going to focus on community, as this is very much in evidence in the 21^st century. The St Margaret Centre was commissioned by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey and was opened in 1992. The Centre serves as a Warm Space three days a week, with a lounge, workspace and Wi-Fi. The Community Café offers low cost lunches and home made cakes and free hot drinks. There’s also a Rough Sleepers breakfast on Tuesday mornings. Walking round the ruins of the Abbey reminded me that centuries ago, the thriving Abbey would have provided similar food and shelter to the community, particularly those in need. In the mid-1800s Barking was a large and important fishing port, with a fleet of 110 fishing vessels. Tradition has it that the roof of the church was designed and constructed by local fishermen to resemble an upturned boat; there’s also a lovely sea-themed stained-glass window.

Sources: Information Booklet; Wikipedia; Church website

St Nicholas, Sutton

This ancient parish church is recorded in the Domesday Book of1086. The original mediaeval church was rebuilt in brick in 1864 at a cost of £7,600, to accommodate the increase in population. The church was designed by Edwin Nash, a Victorian architect in the Gothic style, and dressed with flint and stone, a popular style of the time.  The church contains several monuments taken from the old church, including a stone Mediaeval sacred basin, a ‘piscina’ used to rinse the vessels that held the bread and wine for Holy Communion. Also inside the church are two ‘Charity Boards’ recording charitable bequests in past centuries, going back to 1550. These bequests are all for specific purposes: the education of the children of the parish, the upkeep of the highways, to buy shoes and stockings for the poor, to buy bread and coal and blankets and clothing to be distributed to the poor of the parish. On the North side of the church the windows are plain glass instead of stained-glass as a reminder of the bomb which fell in the churchyard on the night of 24^th September 1940. All the windows on this side were blown out, but this was the only significant damage to the church. Unfortunately, I was not able to go inside and see all these interesting things, as the church is only open one morning in the week. The pictures of the outside of the church almost make me think I’m in a country churchyard, not in a busy South London town.

Source: Church website

St Mary’s, Beddington

I make no apology for featuring our beautiful St Mary’s again, looking her best in the Spring sunshine. The present building was mainly built in the late 14^th and early 15^th century and there is evidence of a wooden church on the site in 1085, as referenced in the Domesday Survey. The church was extensively restored in the Victorian era in the then popular Arts and Crafts style, including wall and ceiling stencilled paintings. I recently enjoyed a latte in the Tower Coffee Shop which serves hot and cold drinks, home made cakes, snacks and ice cream. The café’s seating area is in the central aisle of the church, a wonderful atmospheric setting. St Mary’s has received National Lottery Heritage funding for a new project: Restoring and Celebrating the Arts and Craftmanship of St Mary’s Beddington. This will be used for important capital repairs to the building and also to support the local community through a programme of activities centred around the artwork and artefacts within the church. St Mary’s – beautiful, inside and out!

Source: National Churches Trust

To finish, here are a few other local churches displaying glorious Spring daffs, two pics of each church: St Peter’s, Woodmansterne; St Margaret of Scotland, Carshalton; The Welsh Church, Sutton.