Hall Fulfilling Its Aim (2 December 1977)

The acquisition and opening of the former Labour Hall in Buckingham Road, Bletchley, by the Salvation Army, will be regarded with satisfaction and approval by many people in the area who are not officially connected with that organisation.  For the hall was originally built specifically for a Christian purpose and now it is being used again for that same general purpose.

When Bletchley’s “ex-London” estates were being built by the early 1950s, various churches in the town saw it as their duty to provide for the spiritual needs and some of the social needs of the newcomers.

The Anglicans “accepted the challenge” by building this hall on what is still known as Meager’s Hill.  Two or three cottages stood on part of the ground until they were demolished at much the same time.  The foundation stone of what was known as St Mary’s Hall was formally laid by the Bishop of Oxford, Dr Kenneth Kirk, and at a subsequent tea in the old Yeomanry Hall he expressed high hopes for its future.

When St Mary’s Hall was completed it had a platform at one end for unusual platform purposes and at the other end was a smaller space for use as a chancel.  The hall could thus be used for either purposes simply by turning the chairs round.

A Sunday school was formed there, youth organisations associated with the church met there, and the hall was also used by suitable outside bodies like the Good Companions old people’s club.

However, after only a few years, it became apparent that the hall was not attracting many of the people for whom it was primarily intended.  Moreover, it was too far from the church to be used as a much-needed normal church hall.  So, with regret, it was decided to dispose of the property and build the present hall next to the Rectory Cottages in Church Green Road.

The premises were acquired by the divisional Labour Party in 1960.  Some structural alterations were made and the hall was repainted inside and out, with red as the main colour.  Then in 1962, it was formally opened by Mr Hugh Gaitskell.  At that time Bletchley was the main population centre of the division, but now it is becoming less and less so and the Labour headquarters have moved back to New Bradwell, whence they came.

The Bletchley Salvation Army Corps – first known as the Fenny Stratford corps – was formed in 1886, twenty-one years after the founding of the Salvation Army itself in London by its first general, William Booth.  Almost from the beginning the Army had made a great impact with its evangelising and social work and by 1886 William’s son, Branwell, was Chief of Staff.

On October 2, Bramwell announced a change in the method of training cadets for officership.  He planned to send “lads or lasses” in groups of from 12 to 20 to Salvationists struggling against great odds or needing extraordinary help and there, in houses rented for a period, to have them live, study and work.

These centres, known as depots, were mostly in the midlands and were linked together in a Central Division, with headquarters at Northampton.

Thus it was that one chilly morning in the following month, Fenny was enlivened by the sight of Captain Harriet Lawrence, with another woman officer and 12 cadets (probably all girls, though I can’t be sure) marching from Bletchley railway station to an unoccupied cottage in Fenny Stratford.  It is generally thought this cottage was in Aylesbury Street, though I once heard that it was in Lee’s Terrace, in Victoria Road.

But no matter, suffice it to say that the party found the cottage so sparsely furnished that the cadets had to sit on chairs made of piled-up bricks.  A local tradesman was surprised when Harriet asked if he had any empty tubs for sale which could be used as tables.  And she would also be glad of some soap boxes to replace the bricks as chairs.

The girl cadets made a form from some old wood found in the garden.  They also made a clothes horse and a bookcase.

But nothing daunted by the hard living conditions, the officers and cadets set about their work with such zest that within a fortnight they had held open-air meetings not only in the town by also in nine surrounding villages, trudging through rain, hail and snow, and singing their songs as they went.

The old Fenny Stratford Town Hall was their only indoor meeting place and that was available only on Sunday evenings.  Nevertheless, in the succeeding weeks and months the local corps was put on a sound footing and by May, 1887, Captain Lawrence was able to withdraw from the scene, the pioneering work accomplished.

At the corps’ diamond jubilee celebrations in 1946 seven of the original members still lived in the area.  They were Mr and Mrs Coley, Mr (or Mrs) B Goodman, Mrs Tarbox senior and Mrs Sarah Claridge, all of Fenny and Bletchley, and Mr and Mrs Bryant, of Woburn Sands.

But the greatest pleasure was the receipt of a letter from Harriet Lawrence, who was then a retired colonel, aged 88.  In this, she recalled the old days at Fenny, exhorted all to remain steadfast, and to the young people wrote:  “I give you my life’s motto:  Go in God’s way always.  If you practice this in your daily life and make it your life’s purpose, you will be happy and useful in the corps . . .  You won’t want worldly pleasures such as pictures and make-up.  Read a few verses of the Bible night and morning and pray two or three times a day.”

In 1952, the Citadel in Church Street needed renovation.  The cost was estimated at £800 and this was regarded as a large sum, needing a special effort to raise.  A far cry from the £62,000 needed for the new citadel!

Much later, a meeting hut was sited near the Peter Pan Centre at the same end of the town as the new hall, but the hut was repeatedly vandalised and nothing came of the project.

But the Salvation Army are never downcast for long, and this latest venture is just another earnest of their continued faith and zeal to “Go God’s way always.”