After walking through the graveyard – and spying the laminated poster for the “Stain-glass & Stones” Exhibition a few days ago – we finally visited St Nicholas Church on Saturday 13.9.2025 – at around 14:45 hrs. Prior to this, we had driven to a shopping complex in Purley Way – near Croydon – so it was a busy – but local day for us as a family. We always try to keep the minds of our children stimulated using places of historical significance as the platform for engaging positively with the real world.
Churches, regardless of one’s view toward religion, are the search-engines of the past, because all written data relating to a local community traversed through its structures and registers. Although a Church has been on this spot since Saxon (pre-Norman) times (such structures were normally constructed out of wood) – although this incarnation dates from an extensive refurbishment in 1865. This is when the six stain-glassed windows featured below, would have been manufactured (see the extract regarding Lavers, Barraud, and Westlake) and installed. These windows still look new and are of outstanding quality!
The history of England lies primarily within the grounds, buildings, and written records of its local Churches, who dealt with this information a long time before the Secular State developed – or was able to do so. The Local Authorities of Sutton possess a peculiar attitude toward local history – as if time started again in 1965 (and all previous history was wiped-out when Sutton was part of “East Surrey”) – when Sutton became part of Greater (South-West) London. Of course, for a price, Sutton Library might help you via an online enquiry – but this data is free during a personal visit. Whatever the case, always be on the look-out for local open-days and local historians. In many ways, we are the consquence of the past – which has flowed like a river into the present time.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 