1932a. Southend and Leigh Bridge Club preserve Redcliff Drive Strict Baptist Church opened in 1932 to seat 150 people. This reasonably respectable card-game of Russian origin also takes place within coursed ragstones of the Southchurch Holy Trinity School building, which is perhaps where the missing stones were diverted to in 1906?

1930b. Anglican St. Margaret of Antioch Church with statue of 1931 and adjacent hall of 1966. The small flints in gravel probably hide local London ashes bricks between red courses.

1930a. Potter House Christian Center, originally a church termed Elmsleigh Hall, Leigh-on-Sea. The red bricks in front are unusually small.

1929d. Elm Road, Leigh behind.

?1929c. Westcliff National Spiritualist Church, Hildaville Drive, has a note on the blue illustrated signs “first church was built 1929” so I have included it here. The middle higher part looks like the back of the similarly undated seventh-day Adventist Church near by. Actually there was a spiritualist church on this site in 1924.

1929b. Chalkwell Park United Methodist Church of 1929-30 showing flushwork in the older part.

1929a. Leigh Road Second Baptist Church with tower in reply to R.C. one opposite but in red brick and oolite not random rubble.

1928b. Mock-Tudor, purpose-built St. Gregory Roman Catholic Church, Thorpe Bay. In a third such case it is opposite protestants, in this case Broadway Free Church of 1921, now rebuilt by Methodists (see 1995).

1928a. Mock-Tudor house used now for Rock Dene Christian Fellowship adjacent to site of demolished Eastwood Bethell Free Church built earlier in 1923.

1927c with 1988 extensions. Ferndale Baptist Church, originally built on left as Jubilee Memorial Baptist Church. Smooth red bricks in both parts.

1927b. Elim Christian Centre with new front to the original Southend Christian Tabernacle of London ashes bricks in Flemish bond with red brick headers in arched window head.

1927a with 1952 behind. Highlands Methodist Church, Leigh-on-Sea, original church of oolite ashlar and red brick, with 1955 church beyond entirely in similarly smooth red bricks.

1926c. St. Georges United Reformed Church, formerly Crowstone Congregational, Westcliff. Polygonal P.K.R. and oolite ashlar also used in the paler porch built by F. J. French Ltd. Of Chelmsford dated 2001.

1926b. Anglican St. Michael and All Angels Church, Westcliff, illustrated near the April 17, 1926 foundation stone to show micritic ashlar with large fossils in the red bricks seen also in the late 1950’s of the building.

1926a. Alexander, now Westcliff Free Church, Ronald Park Road, was presumably named by the musical Chapman and Charles M. Alexander Missions, and between 1913 and 1925 was just called a Gospel Hall. The exterior is of white painted concrete blocks of the type seen in adjacent thin walls and the bricks merely painted red. Probably they date from 1926 rather than 1912 when the hall replaced an iron church.

1925b. Westcliff Christian Science Church and Public Reading Room; smooth red brick and pale ornate tiles with Mock Tutor front.

1925a. Bournemouth Park Road United Reformed Church, formerly Congregational and before 1925 Warrior Square Congregational with their 1897 corrugated iron church probably rebuilt in 1925 on right. It simulates the geometric window tracery [C] and door [B] of English stone churches of 1300. The new church in red brick is dated 1925.



[B]




[C]

1924 with 1908 behind. Roman Catholic Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Joseph Church Leigh with dates of 1912 and 1924-5 in Catholic Directory England and Wales 2006-7. 1924 comes from stone in the homogeneous facings of random rubble and tile fragments, which includes dark split Chalk flints and some plutonic ultrabasic or high grade metamorphic rock. Pale Kentish Ragstone and thick mortar present and continue up tower with similar blue clock face to 1903b Greek Orthodox Church. Behind is Mock Tudor front covering London ashes brick hall, originally the Leigh Road Baptist Church, designed by Charles Bowhill.

1923b. Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Northview Drive, with coarse sandy red bricks and uncertain date taken from their arrival on the site in Kelly’s Directories.

1923a. Swedenbourgian New [Jerusalem] church of London ashes bricks with micritic limestone ashlar and pale roof tiles, with newer red brick hall behind on Swanage Road.

1922. Eucharist chapel of St. Michael’s School, Leigh-on-Sea, used for public worship on Saturdays.

1921b. Unillustrated. London ashes brickwork sides to the former Westcliff and Leigh Hebrew Synagogue, now behind altered secular front. They held the site from this date although the synagogue is usually dated to 1928, perhaps the now missing front.

1921a. Anglican Christchurch, Southchurch still in English bond red bricks with oolite ashlar below new design for bell tower, with modern hall undated stretching bond on right.

1920b Shoebury Gospel Hall

1920b Shoebury Gospel Hall of grey local bricks appeared between the 1922 and 1923 editions of Kelly's Directory as "Shoebury Mission Hall". A 1905 Gospel Hall was on another site near by.

But there is contemporaneous evidence from the O.S. 1=10,560 series map of 1920-1 of that particular gap in Wakering Avenue being filled earlier. This is confirmed on page 133 of The Shoebury Story by Maureen Oxford (Ian Henry Publications, Romford, 142 pp.; 2000) where “Shoebury Hall” is reported to hold anniversary conferences commemorating the first service held in it in November 1920.

1920a Southend Crematorium and chapel

1920 (date unclear). The previous church monument stone was dated July 25, three days before Austria-Hungary declared war on the Serbia. It seems better to mark the resulting World War by this view of the smooth red brick and concrete Southend Crematorium and chapel containing a memorial to that war inside. This was a new process in England where the first Crematorium opened in 1885. It might be thought that the move away from proper building materials and Victorian standards was due to the war but actually it took place a few years before with decreased social inequalities. Cremation also seemed to be more socially responsible than burial but in the context of the current CO2 emissions debate responsible people may perhaps prefer to maintain some areas of public space for burials?

1914b. Westcliff United Reformed

1914b. Westcliff United Reformed, formerly Congregational Church, near Mount Avenue. Oolite ashlar, P.K.R. and coursed Ragstone front to cheaper, largely hidden brickwork

1914a. Westcliff Baptist Church and Churchgate

1914a. Westcliff Baptist Church and Churchgate was built to house the congregation in the 1914 church in the early 1960’s, with a new church on the left. Some people thought it was too introverted. Originally the congregation had built the Valkerie Road 1901d building and then an iron church here. Notice the bays on the right with 1914 straight arched window heads and the crude modern use of vertical bricks on the left.

1913b. West Leigh Baptist Church

1913b. West Leigh Baptist Church front with stones of September 24 showing oolite window in Flemish bond brickwork below flushwork of probable concrete. The aisle of 1926 are a good match in front but with rectangular windows, and there is also a 1961 red brick extension.

1913a. Foundation stone date of Belleview Baptist Church

1913a. Foundation stone date of Belleview Baptist Church embedded beside opening date stone of February 14, 1914 in red Flemish bond brickwork, above concrete ashlar with rustication simulated by modern local cockle shells.

1912b. Westcliff Business Center

1912b. Westcliff Business Center, formerly Southend and Westcliff Town Misson Hall, including a painted rusticated keystone to the arch in front of London ashes brick sides.