Building Christ Church: 2007 onwards

New Halls and Vicarage

From 2007, Christ Church began working with Southwark Diocese on a scheme that provide a new, modern vicarage and a new purpose-built hall to serve the Church’s mission to children and young people more effectively. This would involve selling part of the vicarage site for property development and also the Parish Halls and Caretakers house. In many ways, this forms the completion of the vision that was originally set out in the church meeting back in January 1974 (see Building Christ Church: 1968 to 1975).

Opposition by local politicians to this redevelopment recalled the original opposition by Henry Drummond to the original building of the church back in 1857 (see The Start of Christ Church, New Malden). This (together with resistance from other quarters), delayed the project considerably. However, by 2015 it was finally underway.

The old vicarage which had stood for 141 years from 1874 was finally demolished in August 2015.

Demolition of the Vestry Hall (49 years) and the Holly Room/Church Office (34 years) followed in October.

The new vicarage was built to Grade One environmental standards...

...and was completed for the Kuhrt family to move into in September 2016

Building of the new hall continued into early 2017.

The new hall was opened in July 2017, a fitting milestone for our Sesquicentennial year.

The photos below show the interior of the new halls, including rooms used for Children's (the Scramblers and Climbers rooms are shown here) and Youth work.

The New Entrance

Following completion of the new halls, and with the front of the church and its entrance due for refurbishment, we launched an appeal to the members of Christ Church to raise £50,000. The front entrance, together with its paving and flower beds, had grown rather tatty since it was built in 1981, and there was a particular need to improve its accessibility for people using wheelchairs.

The eventual sum raised by the Appeal was £50,300. Work on the entrance refurbishment completed during October 2018.