St Helier Congregational Church
A letter written by Gomer Davies, vicar in 1941
By Beverley Walker
Hundreds of homes were made uninhabitable.
31 Morden Way
Sutton
Surrey
21st April 1941
My dear Alan Green
I wondered whether you knew that we had a [particularly] bad time of it on The St Helier Estate on Wednesday night of last week. We had two landmines [stick] of bombs dropped, fortunately one of the landmines never exploded, this one caused us nevertheless to evacuate from Thursday till Saturday. It affected the houses all around us here in Sutton. But the landmine that did explode fell in Love Lane not far from our church and the bombs [ ] the new hospital. Hundreds of homes were made uninhabitable. They say there were 1500, but I don’t know whether that is so. What I wanted today is that our church had the roof damaged and some glass in the windows broken. We got the roof put right straightaway. The windows were not touched as it was thought the other landmine might cause further damage if it exploded. Fortunately it was got away safely on Saturday afternoon and we were able to hold our [S P] anniversary as previously arranged on the Sunday and had a good time indeed.
Mr Maunder is going to communicate with you as regards the above later.
Hope to see you before the council on Monday.
All the best and kindest regards.
Yours sincerely
Gomer Davies
Ps We are all very thankful that the casualties were not heavy,
Some were killed
The Reverend Gomer Davies became vicar of the St Helier Congregational Church Green Lane, Morden in 1937, replacing Reverend Lyall Dixon. He came from the church in Pontnewydd in Wales.
He was writing to The Reverend Alan Green at the London Congregational Union at Farringdon Street, London
39 Chapel Street, Pontnewydd. The residence of Gomer Davies before he arrived in Morden (2010)
Nigel Jones