The Church of Jesus Christ Apostolic is at 84 Ramsey
Road, Cann Hall, to the south-east of Leytonstone 'village'. Much
effort was concentrated on bringing church missions to the poor,
overcrowded districts of Harrow Green and Cann Hall in the period
between the 1850s and 1890s, when Victorian missionary zeal was at
its height both at home and abroad, and this non-conformist example,
whose history cannot be confirmed, seems to be one such example.
St Anselm Mission Church, on Pevensey Road, Cann Hall
is now called Church House. A stone laid when it was rebuilt as a
private dwelling reads: 'This stone was laid on the 7th day of June
2000... to commemorate the original foundation stone laid on the
20th day August 1896'. The white cross on the roof is inscribed with the church
name. It was originally a mission room for St Margaret's Church
which became the mission church of St Anselm in 1906. It closed down
by 1926.
Cann Hall & Harrow Green Baptist Church
originated in 1875 in mission services held by 'The Christian Band'
in a barn at Cann Hall Farm. A church of 32 members was formed in
1878 and the barn converted into a chapel. In 1881 a small chapel
(now the lecture hall) was opened in Cann Hall Road, and the property
was handed over in 1885 to the London Baptist Association, who built
the present church designed by G Barnes and opened in 1887. By 1926
the membership of Cann Hall Road was 391, but that gradually fell to
89 in 1966.
Holy Trinity Church, on Corn Way, serves
the parish of Harrow Green in South Leytonstone. It lies on a
post-war estate between the High Road and St Patrick's Catholic
Cemetery. The church originated as an iron mission church on
Birkbeck Road in 1874 for St John the Baptist Church. The permanent
church, a plain brick building with painted windows, was opened in
1878. The church was damaged in the Second World War but restored,
apparently without any windows at all.
St Augustine of Hippo is now combined with
Holy Trinity, but it began as a mission church on nearby Lincoln
Street, and in 1886 an iron building was provided in Mayville Road,
one street north. This was replaced in 1889 by a temporary brick
church and in 1902 a plain, permanent church was opened on Lincoln
Street. In 1915 it was gutted by German incendiary bombs dropped
from Zeppelins, but was restored in 1920 and renovated in 1953,
before complete closure sometime later.
St Patrick's Catholic Cemetery is on Langthorne
Road (formerly Union Road). According to the 1863 Whites Directory entry for Leytonstone,
the cemetery was opened in 1861, and extends over eleven and-a-half
acres. It was provided by the London Roman Catholics. There are 147
Commonwealth burials from the First World War and 134 Commonwealth
burials from the Second World War here, but the area closest to the
brown-brick chapel building is a maze of headstones.
Nearby Etloe House was leased in 1856 as a
country house for the first Roman Catholic archbishop of
Westminster, Cardinal Wiseman, who lived there from 1858 to 1864.
But there was no Roman Catholic church in Leyton until 1897. The
cemetery is also where the Irish-born Mary Jane Kelly was laid to
rest, the last of the five confirmed victims of Jack the Ripper. She
was killed in 1888 at the age of twenty-five.
New Testament Assembly church (a
registered charity) is in Langthorne Road, Cathall, Leytonstone.
Began as a mission for Grove Church, Stratford, the Fetter Lane
Church organisation moved to Leyton from London in 1894 and in 1900
the current, strikingly original, Fetter Lane Congregational
Church building was opened, designed by P Morley Horder. It is a
Grade II listed building and since the early nineties has played
host to the NTA Club for the elderly and infirm.
Leytonstone Christian Centre (London
City Mission) is a former undenominational church on Grove Green
Road. It began in 1903 in a house in Pearcroft Road, but an an iron
hall, called Bethsaida, was built in 1906 on this site in Grove
Green Road. In 1912 the widow and family of Josiah Goodman built the
larger, permanent, Goodman Memorial Hall, designed by W Hood. In
about 1938 the hall was handed over to the London City Mission,
which is still in charge.
Christ Apostolic Church, Leyton Assembly,
lies just a few doors to the south of the London City Mission, but
describes itself as being in Leyton instead of Leytonstone. It
started off in 1887 with Free Methodist services in a cottage in
Pearcroft Road. A society was formed in 1889 and the small brick
Grove Green Road Methodist Church was built in Grove Green Road
with the help of Richard Mallinson. The church was enlarged in 1906
and was still Methodist in 1954.