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Chap. XIII.] All Saints' Church. 183
After it had been successfully used for some years, there arrived on the scene a clergyman from Cambridgeshire, the Rev. J. H. Qsill, who after ministering for some time at the Iron Church (called St. Paul's), was encouraged and allowed to take upon himself the responsibility of getting up a new Church to be the Church of a new district carved out of the old districts attached to Trinity and St. Saviour's Churches, and to be placed in Wilmington Square. The site was shifted to Carlisle Road on a suggestion (carefully kept secret) that a Church in Wilmington Square would be close enough to hinder the Devonshire Park being used at some future time for Sunday amusements. The Church was built and consecrated under the name of All Saints' Church, but the Iron Church was not closed, and that was the origin of the heart-burnings. I use that word as the mildest applicable, because having been closely associated with Mr. Usill all through the work up to and after the consecration of the Church, I have a perfectly clear and distinct recollection of what Mr. Usill's opinions were. The litigation alluded to had not directly to do with the Iron Church, but was a matter affecting the boundaries of the new district on the St. Saviour's side. I was not mixed up with that, and therefore do no more than name the matter as having gone into Court before Vice-Chancellor Malins on January 13, 1881.
Mr. Usill was an admirable church financier, and his Building Committee occupied back seats all through the business. At the completion of the church as a whole there was not enough money left to build the tower, but instead of leaving the site of the tower in the condition of a level piece of land, or rather, pathway, as it would have been, Mr. Usill decided to start the tower, carry it up a few feet, and leave it, palpably unfinished and untidy. This had the desired effect. A charitable passer-by might not have thought that a tower was intended or wanted, but the fragment of a tower started was highly suggestive, and it suggested to a benevolent lady to give £3000 to finish it. It was at one time contemplated to raise the foundations of the church so |
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