Chapel Next the Green (the history of Twickenham Congregational Church) index page
No time was wasted in endeavouring to find a suitable successor to Mr Hanson and in February 1899 another young man, the Rev. F.T. Simmonds, minister of Kings Lynn, was invited to accept the pastorate. He had been ordained there three years earlier.
In April 1899 he commenced his ministry and changes followed. The young Minister’s enthusiasm for youth work, social concerns, evangelism and inter-church work quickly became evident but did not endear him to all the members. During his first few years he was conscious of dissent within the Church and on four occasions it was felt necessary to pass votes of confidence in the Pastor, once after he had tendered his resignation. One member to leave during this period was Willian Allison, who served as Church Secretary for 13 years and was also Sunday School Superintendent. Discontent was lessened when in 1903 the Diaconate was replaced by a Church Committee, with a more broadly-based membership.
As older members left new ones came in. Of the 95 members on the roll after revision in November 1907, 62 had joined during Mr Simmonds’ pastorate. Many of them had moved into the new middle-class housing being built in the area and would become leaders of the Church in the years to come. One new member Dr John Harker (of N.P.L. Teddington) recalled at Mr Simmonds’ farewell meeting how he had come to join the Church. Addressing the meeting :
“He well remembered the first Sunday evening he entered the Church. Good Mr Purchase was in the porch, smiling, and gave him a hymn-book and showed him into a seat. He did not remember what the sermon was about, and there was not a large congregation, and it was not a grand service, but he went home and told his wife (and) after his wife had been to a single service he didn’t know which of them was the more delighted.“
Dr Harker was subsequently to serve as a Deacon and Co-Secretary; as for Mr Purchase, at the 1906 Annual Meeting he was presented with “a handsome black marble clock with Corinthian pillars and side ornaments” in recognition of his long and faithful service as Treasurer appreciation was also shown in a less tangible form when he and Mr John Gould were made Honorary (Life) Deacons in 1907.
INDIVIDUAL COMMUNION CUPS
The one substantial change in worship during this period was the introduction in 1905 of individual communion cups which Mr Simmonds felt were “more cleanly, more orderly, and more in keeping with the earliest traditions of the Christian Church”. Despite a three-month trial not all members were convinced, so as a true British compromise it was agreed to use individual cups and the common cup at alternate communion services. (By 1910 the Rev Jenkyn James felt able to state that “he did not think that the former antipathy, which was chiefly of a sentimental character, now existed” and “on the question of the health of the community they (individual cups) were most desirable” and so the matter was finally settled.)
Members were also being encouraged to show their concern for those in need of help. The minutes record collections for free breakfasts for poor children during the winter, Christmas dinners for the needy, St John’s Hospital collections, whilst the Church Lady visitors and Fellowship Guild undertook many tasks that are now the responsibility of the social services.
In November 1905 a request to use the hall for a meeting to inaugurate a new branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was acceded to, the Committee feeling “that in view of the large number of railway employees living in the district encouragement should be given in the matter.“
Meanwhile the connection of the church with education was diminishing. After the opening of the Trafalgar schools in 1904 the financial position of the day school became uncertain, and when Miss Ramsey, the schoolmistress, removed it from the church in 1906 the Committee agreed to waive the rent owing. Meanwhile Mr Simmonds had become a founder member of the Education Committee and a manager of Trafalgar schools and was prominent in representing Nonconformist interests. In 1903, under the ‘conscience clause’ of the 1902 Education Act instruction was being given separately to 200 children in the Baptist schoolroom from 9 to 9.30 a.m. daily, and an appeal had to be made to the church members for help.
Life was not all serious. There were various organisations (including the Boys Brigade founded in 1906) the annual launch and regular bazaars. Noteworthy was the 1902 Centenary Bazaar, held Town Hall over a three-day period. A surviving programme shows what an elaborate affair it was; the proceeds grossed £306, well over one year’s stipend!
In April 1907 the Church Meeting was informed that their Pastor had tendered his resignation “to compile and edit an important literary work” which the church magazine was “convinced will be widely greatly appreciated by a world-wide clientele”. In 1909 Vol 1 of the ‘The Pulpit Encyclopaedia’, compiled by Mr Simmonds was published but as far as is known no further volumes appeared. By this time he had resumed pastoral charge at Romford; subsequently he served with the YMCA, before resigning from the ministry.
The farewell meetings were marked by warm letters of appreciation from the Vicar of Twickenham, Fr. English the Roman Catholic Priest, and Mr Poupart, a former Chairman of the Twickenham UDC (whose Education Committee was “losing its right arm”). Verbal tributes were paid by many friends from within and outside the Church. The retiring Pastor looking back on his eight years in the district remarked on the prominent position which Nonconformity had come to hold in the town within that time – four out of the last five Council Chairmen had been Nonconformists – and on the close friendships and cooperation which had grown between the denominations largely, in Mr Simmonds view, because of the 1902 Education Act which they had jointly opposed.