In 1977, Camberwell was rocked by a particularly depraved news story. Vandals had broken into a derelict church on Burgess Park. Once inside the crypt, they desecrated coffins, mutilated skeletons, and drove a stake through a corpse’s chest.
St George’s Church, with its Greek-style pillars and grand portico, suffered a flurry of similar incidents in the ‘70s and ‘80s. In 1978, people broke in and played football with a 100-year-old skull after pulling skeletons from their coffins. Four years later, thieves smashed a hole in the crypt and hauled out the coffin of a deceased child in search of valuables.
For local reporters, this bizarre string of stories was gold dust. But for Camberwell residents, who had watched the grand old building deteriorate for decades, these were sad chapters in a steady decline.
The foundation stone of St George’s Church was laid on Wells Way in 1822 in what is now Burgess Park. But this building’s story begins seven years earlier, in the summer of 1815, on the bloody fields of modern-day Belgium.
Napoleon, recently returned from exile on the island of Elba, was taking a final stand against the forces of the Seventh Coalition, led by the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blücher. Ultimately, the combined Allied forces overwhelmed the French, forcing Napoleon to retreat and effectively ending his rule as Emperor for the final time.
The battle marked the beginning of a new era of peace after decades of warfare and established Britain as the dominant global power. The British government wanted to commemorate the victory and so followed the Church Building Act of 1818.
The legislation saw an initial £1 million – equivalent to £92 million today – invested in the construction of new churches across the country. Roughly 600 worshipful buildings were erected across the country thanks to church building acts between 1818 and 1824. But other important reasons for church building explain why a corner of Camberwell was chosen.
The Industrial Revolution had fuelled Britain’s global rise but, internally, it was pulling at the social fabric. The working classes had surged from rural areas into cities to get factory work but there weren’t enough Anglican churches to meet the demand. Politicians, having witnessed the revolutionary zeal that swept across France in 1789, hoped churches could be a moral bulwark against dissent.
The jarring demographic change happening in English cities was writ large in Camberwell. In the early 1800s, what is now Burgess Park was fast becoming a densely-populated maze of ramshackle urban dwellings. In 1811, the Grand Surrey Canal, which ran through the area, was completed. This accelerated migration to the area as people rushed to get work on the docks and the other industries relying on its trade.
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Architect Francis Bedford was appointed to design St George’s Church which would sit right on the canal’s bank. He was heavily influenced by Greek revival styles, employing a Doric porto, a tower and a flat, panelled ceiling. Construction began in 1822, and took just two years, costing £16,700. Bedford also designed St John’s, Waterloo, St Luke’s, West Norwood, and Holy Trinity Church, Newington.
His influence is clearly visible in all five buildings – too much so for contemporary critics. Reviewing St John’s in 1827, The Gentleman’s Magazine commented: “After the description of St. George’s Church, Camberwell … it will be unnecessary to go into a minute detail of the present edifice. The monotony of Mr. Bedford’s designs has already been noticed under the head of that building, as well as Trinity Church, Newington.”
Nonetheless, the new church played an important role in the community’s spiritual life. Local population expansion was so rapid that the graveyard was full by 1856 and had to be converted into a small garden that opened in 1887.
In the mid-20th century, London was hit by another wave of social and economic dislocation. But this time, the world was pulled from beneath St George’s foundations. This time, the harbinger of change was Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie.
A respected town planner, Abercrombie was charged with creating the County of London Plan in 1943. After the Nazi bombs of the Second World War, much of London would have to be rebuilt and made fit for the capital of a modern, democratic nation.
Abercrombie’s plan identified large parts of London that were short on open space. The overcrowded portion of Camberwell qualified for a large park to act as a green lung for the local populace. The central section of the modern-day park had already been heavily bombed with many buildings either destroyed or damaged. Over time, dilapidated houses and streets were removed and replaced with greenery and a lake, resulting in the sprawling park we have today.
So St George’s Church, Grade-II listed in 1954, became a white elephant in the middle of the park. With the congregation gone, it started losing its purpose. Poorly maintained, it became increasingly dilapidated. In 1970, it finally closed as a centre of Anglican worship due to structural problems.
Things only got worse for the once-thriving church. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, it witnessed a strange spate of burglaries and depraved criminality. By this time, the church had been taken over by the Nigerian Celestial Church of Christ.
Interviewed by the local press, about the gravediggers who’d unearthed the coffin of a young child, Secretary Peter Idowu said: “It is a disgusting thing to do. People have gone into the crypt four or five times as far as I know. We have sealed it up with concrete and I am surprised they got in.”
In 1980, the church was badly damaged by fire and locals speculated that demolition was inevitable. The vandals didn’t stop there. In 1991, a large bronze statue of Christ at the front of the church was stolen. Now known as the Burgess Park War Memorial, it had been unveiled in 1919 to commemorate First World War casualties. Fortunately, it was found in a Brixton scrapyard a fortnight later and returned to its plinth.
By this point, the congregation had joined the Trinity College Centre and was based in a building on Newent Close in Peckham. But against all odds, St George’s Church was saved. After a successful eighteen-month, £2m conversion, the original St George’s Church re-opened in 1994 as a housing co-operative. The conversion has space for 30 one-bedroom units and is managed by a committee of members.
The Friends of Burgess Park are a group of volunteers dedicated to preserving the area’s heritage. In 2020, the group published an article about the St George’s Church and online comments poured in. Writing online, a woman named Eileen Fall said: ‘All my family going back to middle 1800s were married there. My sister and brother in law in 1959 by Geoffrey Beaumont. He was so drunk at the reception my father asked him to leave. He tied his cassock in a knot round his waist, jumped on his bike and went off singing.’
The huge response to the article showed that St George’s Church remains a treasure trove of memories spanning decades. While the church’s Napoleonic origins give it a sense of grandeur, its true value arguably comes from the role it has played in local lives; the weddings, the sermons and the christenings. So local people will be glad that, while London has changed and swirled around it, St George’s Church has stayed rooted to the spot.
We were marine in St Georges Church in 1958 by the same rev boumught and he was still drunk at our wedding.