OF ENGLAND
THE FIRST SAINT HILDA’S
As St. Hilda’s enters the new millennium it is time to look back as well as forward. To look back to its beginning, less than a hundred years ago, to the influences and the people that inspired its building and the community it came to serve. We begin the story before the building of the present church in Abbey Road.
Warley in the early 1900s was rural, a self contained village surrounded by fields interspersed with isolated cottages and farms connected to the outside world by narrow country lanes.
In 1902 William Jones, wealthy industrialist, quarry owner and property developer, inherited Slatchouse Farm and its surrounding estate, following the death of his father. One of his first acts was to give a piece of land on which to build a church, not an uncommon act among developers who recognized the need for a spiritual and recreational focal point within newly created communities. A church hall was to be built which, initially, was to serve as a church. This would revert to being simply the church hall when, at a latter date, it was hoped to build a permanent church and vicarage on the remainder of the site.
Lady Cobham, of Hagley Hall, laid the foundation stone of St. Hilda’s Parochial Hall to be furnished for church purposes on 29th October 1906, with the Archdeacon of Birmingham conducting the service at the ceremony. The cost of the Church was expected to be ‘fully £1,900’, and a conventional district was assigned it within the Parish of Christ Church, The Quinton, then in Halesowen. The building in Rathbone Road, (named after a member of William Jones’ family), progressed rapidly and the Lord Bishop of Birmingham, Dr. Charles Gore, dedicated the Church just three months later on 26th January 1907. Licensed for services at its dedication and for the solemnization of marriages on 11th February 1907.
Why or when St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, was chosen as the Patron Saint remains a mystery. Was the choice arbitrary, or was it a reflection on the views of the early parishioners on the place of women in the church? There is a legend, widely believed in Warley at the time, that Warley Abbey had once been a grange of Halesowen Abbey, to which Warley belonged before the Dissolution. This distant monastic tradition may also have played a part in influencing the naming of the church. James Jones, Rector of Quinton, and William Stephenson were nominated and licensed to officiate at St. Hilda’s, referred to as the Mission Room at Warley Woods. As Curate in Charge, W.D.Stephenson was overseeing no less than twenty three services a week, three each weekday and five on Sundays. Small wonder that additional clergy help was needed, and later in 1907 Rev.W.E.F. Dodd joined the staff.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
In 1911 Rev. Lacy Hulbert, one of whose previous charges had been St. Hilda’s Darlington, became Curate in Charge at St. Hilda’s. Around 1913 the ‘New Church Fund’ was started, and following rapid housing growth between 1919 and 1924, it was proposed at the AGM on 11th February 1925 that ‘the Ecclesiastical Commissioners be approached to establish St. Hilda’s as a properly constituted independent parish’ With rapidly growing costs considerably more finance was needed, and it was not until 15 years later that the ‘new’ church was consecrated.
At the other end of what is now the parish, another of Quinton’s mission churches, was meeting the spiritual needs of the people, the little corrugated iron roofed building of St. Katherine’s in George Road. Originally known as Warley Mission Room, St. Katherine’s had been opened and licensed for the celebration of the Holy Sacraments by the Lord Bishop of Coventry (this was before the formation of the Diocese of Birmingham) on 27th August 1898..
