The Corrugated Iron Church On Wanlip Road
I recently read an article in the Daily Mail about Iron Churches and this immediately set my mind back to the late seventies when I lived in one of the older houses just past Archdale Street on Wanlip Road. At the time it was a very pleasant backwater to live excepting for the gravel pit lorries that would shake my windows each time they drove by.
On the corner opposite Parkers was an old green corrugated iron church known as St. Aidens, see picture above supplied by Syston Local History group. This used to fascinate me and I always assumed this was just a one off erected by the local community. However, based on the Daily Mail article, it seems many similar ones were erected around the country and I seem to recall one on Abbey Lane.
Internet research reveals that these iron churches were supplied in kit form from a company in Norwich called Boulton and Paul and I would presume in today’s language that they be called pop up churches. Locations would tend to be on unused corner plots with peppercorn rent being paid to the land owners. My research concluded that St Aidens was erected around 1900 whilst many others appeared earlier in the 1800’s.
I don’t recollect a lot of activity around the church but do recall the bell ringing every Sunday evening. Sadly St Aidens is no longer there, having since been replaced by housing.
I often wonder what life would be like living on Wanlip Road in the early 1900’s and could easily imagine the local families, dressed in their Sunday best heading towards the iron church with its bell ringing in the distance.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Newman