A Church Crawl from West Byfleet Station

Determined not to use the car on my last day off, I caught the train to West Byfleet and made it to the churches there, and at Woodham, a longer walk than I anticipated along the canal! I am often finding churches which didn't get very far along the Catholic spectrum beyond an initial High-Victorian heave, or which have retreated from a high-water point. No issue of that sort at All Saints', Woodham, which was an Anglo-Catholic foundation and has never deviated. It is, its incumbent tells me, 'the perfect parish church'. It's not quite frozen in its Victorian splendour, but despite embellishments here and there has never undergone any very radical changes. The high altar has been brought forward from the east end, but not very far, and for special occasions the chairs can be moved around the nave and a portable altar brought in. 

Across the rood beam are carved the words SIC DEUS DILEXIT MUNDUM - 'So God loved the world' - so only the priest can see it, as they turn west to face the people. It's a triumphant insistence on the Incarnation which is at the heart of the Catholic experience of the Gospel. 

One of the cutest touches at Woodham is the confessional. Except it isn't: it's a 'library' with a 'reading seat' installed at the west end of the south aisle in about 1930. At least, that's what the faculty was for, but, as the incumbent points out, there is a decorative grille carved at ear level in the seat, 'so if somebody happened to be kneeling beside you as you were there and told you about their sins, you'd be able to hear them'!

Woodham has a peculiar history: its founder, Robert Norton Stevens, owner of Woodham Hall, was a regular at All Saints' Margaret Street in London, but felt that it was unfair to expect his servants to travel that far, and set up his own church on the same liturgical and theological lines. 

St John the Baptist's West Byfleet is not a church of the Woodham stamp (few are). It is a monumental early-1900s building by Caroe which Pevsner found worth insulting in no uncertain terms. It's impressive, but a bit cold and empty. The chancel's wood fittings (including a very English-Use triptych reredos, which has never been painted) reminded me of some public school chapel rather than a parish church. They do still reserve the sacrament, though, behind a massive oak door in the sanctuary which even the most determined witch would find it hard to break open. The church had a nave altar in the 1990s, put in a dais for it to stand on in 2001, and had some very nice oak furniture installed in 2012, some of the best modern fittings I can remember seeing. When I visited, they were setting the church up ready for a parish fair, so I could witness the altar being moved. Two long poles are inserted into the holes you can see in the picture, so the churchwardens can pick it up and carry it like the Ark of the Covenant.

Owing nothing to any Anglican tradition, but worth noting, the choir stalls have a Green Man. We have one at Swanvale Halt, of exactly the same sort of vintage.