The Sim Window (1878)
After the original Christ Church was built in 1866, both New Malden and the congregation rapidly expanded, meaning that a larger church building was needed.
The first stage of this was the demolition of the original chancel and the construction of a larger one. Until the further expansion that took place in 1894, this was higher than the rest of the church. The 1878 part of the roof can be easily seen by its lighter wood, marking it out from that darker wood used to raise the nave to the same level in 1894.
The 1878 chancel (which structurally remains today) was paid for the Sim family. Originally merchants in the City of London, the family made its fortune in timber and timber products such as paper. John Sim (1782-1863), who was married to Elizabeth Coysgarne, moved to New Malden and lived at Coombe Wood.
He is reputed to have funded the building of the station in 1846 because he wanted to be able to get up to London more easily! John Sim died in 1863 but his family swiftly became generous patrons of Christ Church.
John Sim’s eldest son was John Coysgarne Sim. He served as Churchwarden of Christ Church from 1871-72. On one occasion, he presented Mrs Mary Stirling, the Vicar’s wife with water from the River Jordan so that their daughter could be baptised with it!
John Coysgarne Sim died in 1875 and it was in memory of him and his wife Margaretta that the family provided the 1878 chancel for Christ Church. A plaque with the Sim family crest is still present in the chancel recording this.
In the east wall of the chancel, a window was placed containing the crests of the Sim family. At the top is the crest of the elder John Sim and his wife Elizabeth Coysgarne.
Below this are the crests of John and Elizabeth’s many children with the years that they were born: Eliza (1808), John Coysgarne (1809), Anna (1811), William (1813), Charlotte (1814), Maria (1815), Francis (1816), Henrietta (1818), Alexander (1820) and George (1823).
The crests reflect the desire felt by many wealthy Victorian families to demonstrate their pedigree and counter any damaging assertions that they were nouveau riche!
The Sim window remained in the east wall of the chancel until 1899 when it was decided to replace it with the current windows provided by Mrs Bevan and the Whitehead family. The Sim family gave permission for their window to be replaced and moved to the west wall of Christ Church and this was funded by Mrs Bevan. It seems that Charlotte Sim, who had died in 1888, had been particularly concerned to preserve the window, since the inscription at the bottom of the window records its establishment at her bequest by her surviving sisters, Anna Earle and Henrietta Montgomery. The repositioning of the Sim window into the west wall in 1899 accounts for the unevenness within it and the missing sections of the dedication suggest that it suffered some later damage as well.
There was no separate sermon for this window in the Windows on the Gospel sermon series. However, it was referenced in the second sermon in that series, which you can listen to below.
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