St Columba's, Drypool, is celebrating 100 years of being a church this Sunday. Canon Richard Liversedge of St Columba's writes:
On the 3rd December 1914 the Mission Church of St Columba it (would be known today as a Church Plant) was dedicated by Archbishop Cosmo Lang in the presence of such local worthies as the Rt Hon Thomas Ferens MP, Philip Reckitt (representing the Reckitt family), the Rural Dean Revd Canon J Malet Lambert and the new vicar Revd (later Canon) Berry. The new St Columba’s had been built to minister to the eastern end of what was then the largest parish in England of some 51,000 people.
The building still stands and nowadays is our Church Hall. It was designed to seat 400 and a report of 1926 said it was bursting at the seams!
There were plans to build a permanent Church on the corner of Laburnum Avenue and in due course the Church was built and was consecrated by Archbishop William Temple in 1929 just after he arrived at York. The Mission Building became the Church Hall. The first Church which was never completed owing to financial constraints, was completely destroyed on the night of July 13/14, 1943 by enemy action (pictured) but the Church Hall survived and again it became the Church.
Delay followed delay owing to protracted negotiations over war damage payments which were finally resolved by Berry’s successor that most gifted of administrators, Charles Forder.