St Anne's Lutheran Church: History

From the Twelfth Century to the Great Fire of 1666
The first mention of a church on the present site is in documents of around 1150 which refer to 'St Agnes near Alderychgate' and the 'priest of St Anne's' which was situated near Aldredesgate'.

There was confusion over the name since the church was described variously as St Anne and as St Agnes. For the first century or so the church appears to have been called St Agnes. Certainly by 1467 comes the first mention of 'SS. Anne and Agnes within Aldrichesgate'.

St Anne and St Agnes are not usually linked. St Anne, grandmother of Christ, is venerated in Brittany and Cornwall; St Agnes was a 13-year-old girl martyred in Rome about 300AD.

John de Chilmerk is the first known rector whose dates are certain (1322-26); the parish had 300 communicants during the reign of Edward VI; and in its Norman tower hung five great bells and one small one.

The church was gutted by a fire in 1548 but was rebuilt soon after. Further work was done in 1624 when the church was 'richly and very worthily beautified'. The steeple was repaired 'with great care and much cost' five years later.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 devastated whole areas of the City. St Anne and St Agnes was only one of the many churches destroyed.

From Christopher Wren to the Twentieth Century
Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), the most famous architect of the time, undertook the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral and 51 of the City churches - a tremendous thirty-five years' task. Today some twenty churches remain more or less as he designed them.

St Anne and St Agnes was the eleventh church to be built by Wren. He planned it in the form of a Greek cross - perhaps influenced by the Niewe Kerk in Haarlem in the Netherlands. The tower had survived the fire and was incorporated in the new design. John Fitch of the Grocers' Company was the contractor, the work cost £2,448, and the building was rehallowed in 1680.

The parish was united with the parish of St John Zachary by Act of Parliament in 1670 as St John's was not rebuilt after the Great Fire.

Famous parish residents have included the poet John Milton, John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, and John Wesley, founder of the Methodists, who preached twice at the church in 1738. An organ was installed in 1782. A book of 1848 commented that with only 178 families in the parish the church could not afford to buy bells. Gas lighting was installed in 1862 and electric lighting in 1894. By 1901 the population had fallen further to 67 people, a sharp contrast to the population of 1459 in 1801. The Ward of Aldersgate Within had become a place where few people resided.

World War II to the present day
Almost three centuries after it had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London, St Anne and St Agnes was severely damaged by incendiary bom1bs during the night of 29-30 December 1940.

A temporary roof enabled Anglican services to resume, but from 1963 to 1968 the church was restored through contributions from the international Lutheran community for use by Lutheran congregations. Because the restoration followed Wren's design the church now has an authenticity and simplicity not present before the War. During the 19th century many features, such as stained glass, had been added. Today the church appears much as it did when Wren completed it.

St Anne and St Agnes was rehallowed on St George's Day 1966 for use by Estonian and Latvian Lutheran congregations. The Church of England, with which these Baltic churches have a special relationship, made an agreement for this to be done. St John's Lutheran Church, an international English-speaking congregation founded in 1951, began holding services at the church in 1966. In 1988 St John's changed its name to St Anne's Lutheran Church.

England's original Lutheran congregation was formed in 1669 when Charles II granted a Royal Charter to Germans who built the first Lutheran church in London in 1673, on the site where Mansion House underground station is now located. This congregation moved to Dalston in East London in 1873, and later to Essex. In 1694 its Westminster members founded St Mary's German Lutheran Church in the Savoy Palace. St Mary's now has a church on Sandwich Street, near St Pancras.

Today, Lutherans continue to worship at St Anne and St Agnes with congregations made up of people from many countries and many traditions. Click here to read the story of the present congregation. St Anne's is part of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain, a member church of the Lutheran World Federation.

St. Anne’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Celebration of 40 Years at St. Anne’s & St. Agnes’, 23 April 2006

Some of our original church elders
Gladys, Rev'd Dr. Johann Schneider and wife Barbara and Hans Popper

OUR HISTORY: A SUMMARY

Our mother congregation is St. Mary’s German Lutheran Church, the second-oldest of the German congregations in London, founded in 1694 (the same year as the Bank of England). Not long after World War 2, their pastor, Dr. Hans-Herbert Kramm, began to hold the service once a month in English, for the second generation and for mixed-marriage couples. But he soon realised that this was not enough, not only for St. Mary’s people but for the many Lutherans coming here from English-speaking countries. Full-time work was needed. Then help came from Dr. David Ostergren, an American pastor who was the Lutheran World Federation’s Senior Representative in the UK. Through his efforts the LWF agreed to give financial support. Hans Kramm was clear that it should be a new congregation, even if it started under St. Mary’s umbrella. So St. Mary’s called a young Canadian pastor, Herbert Hartig, to start the new work. He had been recommended by his church president, what would now be called his bishop. He and his wife Margaret arrived in July 1951, and on the 10^th Sunday after Trinity (29^th July that year) Hans Kramm inducted him into the office of pastor of the new congregation. That was our birthday.

We started with perhaps a dozen members; a small committee of 4 was the first church council. The organist of St. Mary’s played for us too. We had the Eucharist every Sunday. We used the liturgy recently introduced for St. Mary’s English-language services, with the tunes familiar to that congregation and some hymnbooks (without tunes) inherited from the ELCE congregation in Kentish Town. In the introits shown in those books we underlined some syllables in pencil so that we could sing the introits to the Gregorian psalm tones as St. Mary’s did.

Later we sang them from the American red Service Book and Hymnal. For Herb it took a lot of patience with the slow growth – he remembers “8 to 12 attending; it took seven months before we had 16 attending Easter service”. A jump came when the Hungarian Pastor Károlyfalvi went to Canada, Herb invited the members of his small congregation to join us and they did. A Sunday School was started. In 1953 the Lutheran Council of Great Britain, in which most Lutheran groups in this country are federated, acquired the Church House in Collingham Gardens. Herb started regular evening services at the Church House, but an attempt to evangelise the neighbourhood there had no success. Yet by the time Herb and Margaret returned to Canada in October 1954 we had grown quite a bit, including children and young people.

Next we had for one year as Interim Pastor Dr. James Beasom, just retired from being president of a Californian Lutheran synod. A magnificent preacher, he put in a lot of good work to build up the congregation, both in dealing with people and in getting us to acquire and donate things for use in the Church House chapel: An altar, dedicated to the memory of Hans Kramm after his early death, crucifix and candlesticks, communion vessels. The altar and vessels we still use.

From October 1955 our pastor was Vernon Frazier, previously in Lexington, SC, whom some of you know. His strength was to take the situation by the scruff of the neck and put it right as best he knew. St. Mary’s English Lutheran Church, as we called it, was founded as an independent congregation; but this fact had been kept a bit quiet. Vern got us to move to the Church House in Collingham Gardens, to take a new name, “St. John’s”, use the American service book of the time, and to adopt a written constitution. (We had always intended to have one, but other things were more urgent and meanwhile we had worked quite well by custom, English fashion.) He found that people from the Latvian and Estonian congregations, even the younger generation, would not come to us. He realised that unlike his own preference, they were used to very rare communions, and hoped to win them by reducing ours to once a month. I don’t think it won over a single one, but it took us a generation to get our weekly Eucharist back.

If you have responsibility you have to take decisions, facing a situation new to you with what experience and empathy you have. So you are bound to make mistakes, and I certainly made some bad ones at that time. One of Vernon’s was not to realise that Lutherans in this country are often members of two congregations, whether because of language or distance or less than weekly services or because of their marriage partner, and that just these people may be your most faithful and committed members. Using an American model constitution, inadequately adapted, made them into “associate members” without voting rights. That hurt.

Years later, when Vern had retired and came to spend a year with us as “Pastor for Evangelism”, the first thing he and I did was to confess our mistakes to each other and have a wonderful reconciliation; we’ve felt good about each other ever since. We had both learnt a lot in the intervening years, the hard way. He encouraged me in my ministry, and now his way was warm. He came back several times and our congregation appreciated his help and his presence.

Back in 1956, after a year with us, Vern succeeded David Ostergren as LWF Senior Representative, and a year later, in 1957, helped us to call his friend William Wegener from the same town to succeed him as our pastor. Bill continued on the foundation laid, and helped us to recover from the previous upheaval. We soon had communion twice a month in the morning, and later also once a month in the evening. In 1959 Bill married Ellie Bundt, a journalist, and together they started and ran a monthly “St. John’s News” as a lively and informative newsletter. Ellie took part in the women’s group which had been running for some time. The congregation grew apace. Nevertheless the LWF office in Geneva got the strange impression that Bill was not up to the job, and wanted to replace him. But the congregational meeting unanimously rejected his resignation and supported the church council’s letter to LWF asking that Bill should continue. You can imagine that this did wonders for his morale, and he and we went from strength to strength. That year (1960) we celebrated our anniversary, the 9^th, on the 10th Sunday after Trinity (what we now call the 11^th after Pentecost), with over 100 at the service, and have done so ever since. Next year saw the founding of the United Lutheran Synod, now our Lutheran Church in Great Britain. We started a preaching station in Balham, South London, held the first Swahili service and started a building fund – the Church House chapel was getting too small for us! In 1963 we took part in the first joint Reformation service of the many Lutheran congregations in London. Our membership was approaching 200, including about 40 children. In High Wycombe Gottfried Klapper, Hans Kramm’s successor at St. Mary’s, had started a small worship group in German. This was continued in English by Bill Schaeffer, the first Chairman of the United Synod, and became part of our St. John’s. We have had the joy of constant visitors and of members from 20 or 30 countries from all over the globe.

In January 1964 Bill and Ellie went back to the States. That month the congregation voted to call as their new pastor Róbert Pátkai, who gave us devoted service for 24 years. In 1956 the Hungarians had revolted against Stalinist rule and had then been suppressed by the Soviet army. Many fled abroad. Among those reaching the UK were Róbert and his fiancée Elizabeth who were promptly married here. Róbert soon restarted the Hungarian congregation. Having to learn English from scratch, it was very courageous of him to take us on after a few years here; but with hard work and love for people he succeeded.

A very few highlights from his time: In 1966 the move to the church of St. Anne and St. Agnes, of which we are celebrating the 40^th anniversary today. 1969 foundation of St. Anne’s Music Society. Later Róbert becoming Chairman, eventually Dean, of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain –United Synod until 1988, also Chairman of the Lutheran Council until 1989. Each January, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, getting together with our Anglican neighbours at St. Vedast’s to have our Sunday Eucharist together. Early 1988 change of our name to “St. Anne’s”, to avoid confusion with the name of the building.

Before then Pastor Ronald Englund, who had been a missionary in Tanganyika, had joined us. He restarted the Swahili services on a regular monthly basis. In the 1980s he and Peter Lea-Cox greatly expanded our musical work as a means of outreach, by including regular Sunday evening services at St. Anne’s. The problem of integrating this work with that of the main congregation could only be solved after Róbert had resigned in late 1988 and Ron Englund was elected Pastor, and around that time Peter Lea-Cox appointed Cantor. During Ron’s time the congregation grew further, with more American members temporarily resident here, and the Eucharist was restored to every Sunday morning service. A committee worked out a new constitution appropriate to our circumstances, though it was only adopted by the Congregational Meeting in March 1995.

At the end of 1994 Ron retired on reaching age 65, after a busy and fruitful ministry, and the congregation elected Paul Schmiege (Pastor of a church in Seaford, NY) as his successor. He, Connie and the children arrived in March 1995. During the 3-month vacancy Dean Walter Jagucki was nominally in charge, but told me: “You are the gaffer!” I liked this because of the double meaning of the term: According to the Oxford Dictionary, it can mean “the foreman of the gang”, and we had a wonderful gang of people helping out, including pastors and especially Brian Fisher; or it can mean “elderly rustic, old fellow”, in other words some old geizer standing there propping up a wall!

Paul served us well; he and Dr. Beasom were the best preachers we have had. Unlike Dr. Beasom, Paul moved our habits a little notch more “high church”. After a while Connie took on the work of our church administrator, to our great benefit – what George Cienciala has been doing in recent years.

When Ron came his stipend was still paid by the mission department of his home church. Later the congregation gradually assumed a growing share, so that beginning with Paul we have been entirely responsible for stipend and housing costs. Even so Paul had taken a pay cut in order to come to us. During his time the Lutheran Council sold the Church House where the Schmieges had been living, so that they had to move to another part of London where the schools were much worse. That meant using up their savings to send the children to private schools, and finally returning to the States, in July 2000.

In the following Spring we elected as our pastor Jana Jeruma-Grinberga, whom Bishop Jagucki had put in charge during the latter part of the vacancy; and we are still very glad to have her and her faithful service! Lately she has been helped by Pastor Margrethe Kleiber as Associate Pastor

Characteristic of our congregation is the enormous turnover of people apart from a small core. This has continually brought us some who have been towers of strength while they were here, like a number of Assistant or Associate Pastors and many senior Americans who worked here for several years and contributed generously their time, their expertise and not least their money. That has changed greatly since September 2001 – we still rejoice in our many temporary members and benefit from them, but they tend to be younger, poorer and staying shorter.

We are also missing Ron Englund’s gift for making friends with people in the City Guilds and getting generous gifts from the Guilds for the work of the Music Society. All that shows up in our finances. In the past, several big special needs were met by special funding – particularly our new organ, and repair and redecoration of the church building. Contributions came among others from former members now in America and from English Heritage. Now we have a similar need for urgent repairs to the church tower, but far greater difficulties in funding. But at least as worrying is the plight of the ongoing budget. Good job our new Finance Committee is having a go at that! The latest budget does look a bit more hopeful. And after all, the Lord still seems to have some use for us – and he is still in charge!

Johann Schneider

Rev Dr Johann R L Schneider wrote the congregational history on this page.