St Francis celebrated its golden anniversary in 2012, marking 50 years of serving the community of Monks Hill and Ballards. It’s beginning was rather more shaky. When the Monks Hill estate was built in the 1940s, the Diocese of Southwark bought a plot of land to build a church on Selsdon Park Road. For many years nothing happened and it wasn’t until the Ballards estate was built in the 1950s that another plan was hatched. The land was swapped for a piece in between the two estates and, after much fund raising, the church was built on its present site on the corner of two roads. It was consecrated in December 1962.
In 2003 when the Bishop was considering St Francis’ future a large neighbouring church, Emmanuel South Croydon, GC5Y9HD approached the Bishop and said it wished to do a church plant or graft. The upshot was an appointment of a minister to be both senior curate at Emmanuel and minister-in-charge of St Francis and a group of about 13 members from Emmanuel moving to St Francis. With time the growing congregation and ex-Emmanuel members at St Francis grew into one congregation and the church started to grow. It is now an incredibly diverse, vibrant church community (with at least 10 nationalities present) and a church that is very much a going concern.
**************************************
For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro@gmail.co.uk.
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
*************************************
The Cache
At the given coordinates think hard and see if you can see a colour teddy bear reversed. Hopefully the colour you see features in the colours of the rainbow. Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain. Depending on the colour you see assign it a number (n) based on ROYGBIV=1234567.
Using n in N 51 20.97(2n) W 000 03.3(n+4)5 work out final coordinates and go find the cache. Please replace exactly as found ensuring it cannot be seen. It is possible.
