A New Church PT I
As Father Lockhart could be regarded as the founder of the old church, Father Dempsey, who was the parish priest from 1920 to 1962, can be regarded as the founder of the present church. He “inherited” a parish, which was in financial trouble. Moreover, the leasehold of the land on which the church and school stood (which had been acquired by his predecessors) was soon to run out. There were very serious concerns that the site of the church and school would have to be given up. As a result of his determined efforts, however, the freehold of the land was acquired “for a song”. Father Dempsey’s chief concern was now the school. In 1934 the site at Balls Pond road and King Henry’s Walk became available. It had originally been occupied by a Bookbinders Provident Asylum. Father Dempsey was determined to acquire the land as a site for a new school. He immediately paid a deposit of £1435 on the purchase price and borrowed the rest. From then until the outbreak of the war much effort was put into raising money to reduce the debt. Some of our older parishioners sill remember the bazaars run by the church to raise money for the building fund and the planned giving scheme.
Then came the war. After the war it was decided that the most urgent need of the parish was now for a new church presbytery, since the old one was now almost 100 years old and was, in any case, only a converted structure. Father Dempsey engaged an architect, Mr Wilfred C Mangan, to draw up plans. He then got the necessary permissions from the various authorities. The whole parish community, both adults and children, now became enthusiastically involved in different schemes to raise funds to build the new church. Each child contributed one shilling each week to buy a brick for the church, while adults paid one pound for each brick, and the donors knew in what part of the building “their” bricks would go. Of course there were also bazaars and raffles, etc. Everybody got a lot of fun out of these fundraising efforts.
Father Dempsey had hoped to finish the work of building the new church but unfortunately ill health forced him to retire in July 1962, at the age of 81, having been parish priest in Kingsland for 42 years. Altogether he had spent 45 of 56 years as a priest in Kingsland.
Awaiting the arrival of Cardinal Heenan for the consecration of the new church, 31.5.75
The Ursulines of Jesus / A New Church pt II
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