SHOULD CHURCHES BE SAVED ? SIR,—The Archdeacon of Leeds believes
in selling little-used churches, even if they are of architectural interest, in order to build new ones elsewhere. Our ancestors did better than this: if they wanted a new church. they found the money for it themselves. The inhabitants of Poplar *and Blackwall in Stepney, for instance—not a rich place— raised among themselves £30,000 in 1823 for their first parish church; those of the new part of Chelsea, £40,000 for St. Luke's. And this was not at all rare.
The habit of selling churches for their site value began in the Victorian age. It deprived London of some thirty churches, all built in an architectural style disliked by the ' respon- sible people in the diocese' to use the Arch- deacon's phrase. It has too often been these people who have pulled down our lovely old churches' for their wisdom in this matter to be accepted as infallible. The present scheme for the Guild Churches in the City of London shows that good sense and good will can use fine churches whose congrega- tions thave moved away.
Cure of souls before architectucc is an excellent sentiment, but has the Church really no other ' assets ready to hand' than a much admired eighteenth-century church ? The piety of our ancestors, to which all old churches is a monument, is hardly a mere economic asset. Nor is the religious heritage of us all the ' domestic matter' of any committee.
Dog won't eat dog; must church eat church ?—Yours faithfully,
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