St Andrew Church,  Portslade
History
 

St Andrew Church 1864

In the early 1860's there were many houses in the southern part of Portslade, sometimes called Copperas Gap, and that the people who lived there were some distance from their Parish Church of St Nicolas. At the instigation of the Vicar of Portslade, the Revd. F.G.Holbrooke, the Church of St Andrew was built in 1864. The new church would serve the District of Copperas Gap in the Parish of Portslade, the district included both South Portslade and Fishersgate.

One of the conditions for the funding of the new Church was that all seats would be "free". Pew rents were still payable in many Churches in the 1860's. At St. Nicolas Portslade where pew rents were in operation, there are still some pews marked "free", dating from Victorian times. A local Brighton architect Edmund Scott designed both St. Andrew's Church and St Nicolas Church School in Locks Hill, Portslade. Scott went on to design probably, the most impressive and nationally known church in Brighton, St Bartholomew's in Ann Street.

St Andrew’s was Consecrated on the 18th October 1864, the Feast of St Luke, by the Bishop of Chichester
The following report comes from The Brighton Herald :-   On Tuesday 18^th October 1864 the Church was consecrated. The Bishop was received at the door of the Church by the Chancellor of the Diocese, the Registrar, and the Clergy. He at once proceeded to the Communion table, on which the vessels for the Holy Communion had been previously place.
 
The Bishop and Clergy, consisting, the Revd. Archdeacon Otter, the Rev. W. Kelly of Hove, the Revd. Vicar of Portslade, the Revd. Mr Field of Lancing College, &c., walked in procession down the Nave, and then returned, repeating alternately the verses of the 24^th Psalm, “The Earth is the Lord’s, &c.,” The Bishop being seated at the Communion table, the Chancellor presented the deed of conveyance of the site of the new edifice, and His Lordship proceeded with the very beautiful service by which the act of consecration is performed.

The usual Morning Service then commenced; the Vicar, who was assisted by the Archdeacon and others, taking the lead. The Psalms, special for the occasion, were the 84^th, the 122^nd, and the 132^nd; the lessons, also special, 1 Kings viii., 22-61, and Hebrews x., 19-25.; the Epistle and Gospel, likewise special, 2 Cor. vi., 14-18, and John ii., 13-17. The service was intoned; the Psalms chanted to Gregorian music. A harmonium was used as an assistant; but it is hoped that the instrument will be replaced ere long by an organ. 

The Revd. Mr Field, of Lancing College, preached from Luke xix. 10: “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” Having described his original work of seeking and saving, the preacher stated that the same work was still being carried on by the ministers of Christ. “As My Father has sent Me, even so I send you.”  “As the Father hath sent the Son to have power on earth,” to forgive sin, “even so” with a like object, with like powers, His ministers go forth, with their message of peace and good will, with their commission to bind and loose, to teach, to baptise. It was Christ Himself who worked in His ministers. He was present among those who represented Him among men. Baptism, the Holy Communion, Confession, Absolution, were only so many channels through which it pleased Him to convey His grace to man, the outward and visible signs of that grace which He alone invisibly bestows upon us. Through His ministers, He is still seeking to save that which was lost.
A new church was one of the means He employs to that end, and especially was this the case when the church was in a place containing the class to which our Lord devoted His life, the poor of His flock. “To the poor the Gospel was preached,” There was no doubt that this small church was likely, at no distant time, to be the centre of an enlarged population. The 1,100 inhabitants at present around it, and who might be expected to avail themselves of its services had, for the most part, been gathered together during the last five or six years. The population was most rapidly increasing. Surely, then it was of great importance that the Church should occupy such a field of labour.

The Surrey Standard reported on the 25th October 1864, " A church at Copperas Gap, which has been recently erected to meet the spiritual wants of almost 100 souls in that neighbourhood, was on Tuesday last Consecrated by the Bishop of the Diocese. The situation of the new church is just above the Britannia Steam Flour Mill, near the Railway. The total cost of the undertaking is stated at £1,541, of which sum about £350 remains to be provided. There is accommodation for about 350 persons: and the seats are all free and un-appropriated. The edifice is of un-ambitious aspect, and in the Early English style. It will at least be put to more practical purpose than its neighbour, Aldrington Church, which is a ruin and a desolation, but nevertheless supplies a "living" of about £400 a year to somebody."

In 1872 Fr.Enraght was appointed Priest in Charge of St Andrew Church. He was a High Churchman and very active in his defence of Ritualism in published pamphlets and letters to the The Brighton Gazette promoting the return of lost English Catholic practices to the Church of England. While living in Portslade, Fr. Enraght published the booklets “The Real Presence and Holy Scripture” and “Catholic Worship”
In 1874 Fr Enraght left Portslade to become Vicar of Holy Trinity, Birmingham, where he was imprisoned in 1880 under the Disraeli Government's Public Worship Regulation Act, for re-introducing ritualism into worship. He become nationally and internationally known as a "prisoner for conscience sake". See the Fr Richard Enraght pages to learn more about his life, ministry and publications.

In 1880, St Andrew Church School was built, the school closed in the Second World War never to re-open.

In May 2003 a major internal building programme was undertaken to convert St Andrew Church into a much needed South Portslade Community Centre with an integral smaller St Andrew Church. For more information on the work of the South Portslade Community Centre please visit the CAPS web site

The newly re-ordered St Andrew Church was officially reopened by the Bishop of Chichester in July 2004. See Parish Diary for the times of weekday, and Sunday Services at St Andrews
 

The stained glass windows on the south side of the Sanctuary's depict
William Morris's
St George, titled 'Valour'
and
E. Burne Jones, 'St Wilfrid'

The Sanctuary's stained glass widows depict, left-right:-
St. Andrew bringing a boy with five loaves and two fishes to Our Lord,
The Resurrection of Our Lord.
St. Andrew bringing St. Peter to Our Lord.

 "The Baddeley Window"
The centrepiece window of the Sanctuary is the “Baddeley window” depicting The Resurrection. The window was, sadly, given in memory of Lt. Alfred Baddeley who served in the Royal Sussex Regiment and was killed in action near the Somme three weeks before the end of the 1st World War aged 19 years. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission gives as his next of kin, his brother, Walter Baddeley, who eventually became a Bishop in the Melanesian Islands. A Cross was presented to him by Islanders, used to stand in front of the Baddeley window on the north wall in the original layout of St Andrew Church. It would seem highly probable that the theme of The Resurrection for the window was the choice of the Walter Baddeley, as a memoriam to his brother, Alfred. At the time of the windows installation in St Andrew’s, Walter Baddeley would have been entering Theological College.

Who was Walter Baddeley? Walter was born in Portslade in 1894 and educated at Varndean School, Brighton, Keble College, Oxford and Cuddesdon College. He enlisted in the army in 1914 and took part in some of the fiercest engagements on the Western Front with the Royal Sussex Regiment. He was awarded the DSO and the MC and bar and was four times mentioned in dispatches. In 1921 he took Holy Orders and served as a Curate and finally a Vicar in Yorkshire until 1932, when he was chosen to be a Bishop in Melanesia. On his arrival in Melanesia, Bishop Baddeley found that the Anglican Melanesian Mission’s medical work was given low priority. He immediately changed this priority and promoted medical work as integral to the Mission’s work. This was a consequence of his belief in ‘the redemption of the whole man’. He had been a Bishop there for about seven years when the 1939-45 War broke out.

In the war years Dr Baddeley was never driven out of his diocese during the time of the Japanese occupation. He hid in the jungle living off the land, where he carried on his ministry, caring for the sick and wounded Islanders who were fighting for the Allied cause. Bishop Baddeley was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom with palm for his services in aiding American Servicemen. In 1944 he visited Australia to seek funds for the restoration of his mission station, the school in Maravovo and infant welfare centre in Siota, which were all destroyed in the War. When Dr Baddeley left Melanesia to become the Suffragan Bishop of Whitby in 1947, he had the satisfaction of seeing the work of his former diocese re-established on firm foundations. In 1954 he was appointed Bishop of Blackburn and served as a Member of the House of Lords.
The Right Rev. W. H. Baddeley, DSO., MC., DD., Bishop of Blackburn
and former parishioner and Sunday School Teacher of St Andrew’s, Portslade died in 1960.
 

Formerly sited in the original layout of St Andrew Church but now in the South Portslade Community Centre's Hillman Room there is a Great War 1914-1918 Memorial to commemorate those from the Parish of St Andrew’s Portslade, which at that time also included Fishersgate, who fell in the First World War.
(All the listed names on this Memorial are also commemorated
 on the Portslade War Memorial in Easthill Park, Portslade, )


“Erected by Parishioners and Friends to the Glory of God and in memory of those who died for England, Home and Duty.
Remember before God these who fell in the
Great War 1914-1919”

 

The Sanctuary window depicts
The Resurrection of
Our Lord.
The window was given in memory of  Lt. Alfred J. Baddeley who died in action on the  23rd October 1918 The Baddeley Family lived in North Street Portslade