Category: St Peter’s Church

Site of former St Peter’s church, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

Geograph – 2009

Site of former St Peter's church, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

Site of former St Peter’s church, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

St Peter’s parish church, on the corner of Courtlands Avenue (right) and what is now Lyme Farm Road (foreground), was built in 1871. The church was closed in 1939 due to poor attendance. The building survived World War 2, being used for storage, and was not officially redundant until 1960. The site was sold in 1961 to Wates for housing development for £5000: the extent of the church building is represented by the nearest block in this photo and the one to the left of it.

A new church was built in 1960 on a site on Eltham Road and has itself since been replaced – see TQ4074 : St Peter’s church, Eltham Road, Lee. The war memorial remains and can be seen towards the right of this picture. TQ4075 : St Peter’s parish war memorial, Courtlands Avenue, Lee.

St Peter’s parish war memorial, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

Geograph – 2009

St Peter's parish war memorial, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

St Peter’s parish war memorial, Courtlands Avenue, Lee

The only evidence left on the ground of St Peter’s church that used to stand on the site of the block of houses in the background is this war memorial. Its octagonal base bears the names – many now illegible – of the men of the parish who fell in World War 1, with a later addition marking World War 2 (but without additional names). See TQ4075 : Plaque on St Peter’s war memorial, Lee for the plaque.

Plaque on St Peter’s war memorial, Lee

Geograph – 2009

Plaque on St Peter's war memorial, Lee

Plaque on St Peter’s war memorial, Lee

This is the plaque recording the history of the church TQ4075 : Site of former St Peter’s church, Courtlands Avenue, Lee and its war memorial TQ4075 : St Peter’s parish war memorial, Courtlands Avenue, Lee.

Three Stole Lead From Derelict Church

Kentish Independent – Friday 08 April 1960

Three Stole Lead From Derelict Church

Three men were fined a total of £24 at Greenwich on Friday after they had pleaded guilty to stealing about 5 cwt. of lead worth £5 from the derelict St. Peter’s Church in Courtlands Avenue, Lee, the previous day.

Michael Lee (39), chargehand, of Pickton House, New Park Road. Brixton. was fined £7, Michael Mackrait (38), labourer, of Cintra Park, Upper Norwood, was fined £12, and Leonard Charles Lucas (38), lorry driver, of Byan Street, Fulham, was fined £5.

Police said the derelict church was used as a store and Lee and Mackrait, who were employed on a nearby building site, stripped off a quantity of lead before approach-ing Lucas and asking him to pick it up in his lorry.

Observation was kept on the church grounds and the men were arrested when they went to pick up the lead, Lee told the police: “We would only have got a few pounds for it.”

Magistrate inspects church fittings

East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 24 June 1955

Magistrate inspects church fittings

Poplar men found guilty of receiving

STATUES of angels, ecclesiastical vases, memorial plaques, a church bell, a font, a sacristy, and a weather vane, all alleged to have been stolen from a church at Eltham, were displayed in and outside the Thames Courtroom on Friday, and were inspected by the Magistrate (Col. W. E. Batt).

Roy Little, aged 18, general dealer, and his brother, John Henry Little, aged 28, lorry driver, both of Lochnagar-street, Poplar, and Vincent Patrick Keeping, aged 20, general dealer, of no fixed address, pleaded not guilty to stealing between May 7 and June 10 from St. Peter’s Church, Courtland-avenue, Eltham, approximately hundredweights of brass, copper and lead church fittings. valued at £60, the property of the South London Church Fund and Diocesan Board of Finance. six

They also pleaded not guilty to receiving the fittings. knowing them to have been stolen.

STORAGE

Canon Laurence Ambrose Brown, Southwark Diocesan Secretary, in charge of re-building war-damaged churches in South London, said that all the fittings had been stolen from St. Peter’s Church, which had been used for storage purposes for the last 14 years.

Det. Const. Stanley Evans said he found all the fittings at the address of the Littles early in the morning of June 10. In a bedroom in the house, he found Roy Little in bed, with his brother John under the bed. Keeping was hiding, doubled-up, in a clothes cupboard.

After questioning, they were all taken to the police station.

Roy Little told Col. Batt that he bought the fittings from a gipsy at Sidcup. He paid £28 for them and took them to his storage railway arch at Deptford. Because he thought they would not be safe there, he contacted his brother, who was visiting Woolwich, and his brother took them in his lorry to Poplar for safe keeping. John Little said that when John Little said that when they all got to Poplar, his brother and Keening decided to stay the night. When the police knocked on the door he realised that something was wrong and hid under the bed because he was afraid of the police. He did not know the metal was stolen.

Keeping said he helped to unload the church fittings from the “gipsy’s” lorry near Sidcup police station. From the look of the fittings he assumed they must have come from a builder’s yard.

“What, angels and plaques to deceased gentlemen and things like that?” queried Col. Batt, who said that there was no evidence of stealing against the three accused and dismissed the stealing charge. He found them guilty of receiving.

John Little, who was reported to have 13 previous convictions, was remanded on bail of £25 until June 25 and Roy Little and Keeping were both placed on probation for two years.

Abbey Wood man was led into trouble

Kentish Independent – Friday 07 November 1952

ABBEY WOOD MAN WAS LED INTO TROUBLE

Stated to have been led into trouble when he got into un-desirable company, Joseph Ernest Dalladay, 22, street trader, of Abbey Grove, Abbey Wood, was placed on probation for years when he came up for sen-tence at the London Sessions. two

Last sessions. Dalladay pleaded guilty with three other men, who were sentenced to 15, 18 and 21 months’ Imprisonment for a re-ceiving church bell, other articles, which had been stolen from a store in St. Peter’s Church. Courtlands Avenue, Lee, and for taking and driving away a lorry from Kentmere Road, Plumstead, belonging to Harry William Alcorn, of Barth Road, Plumstead.

Mr. Eric Dashwood, Court Probation Officer, said that Dalladay, who had lost a leg in an air raid at the age of 15, had not been in trouble betore