Church at top of East Bank Rd and Haunted House below

[cuttsie]

There used to be a very big church at the top of East Bank Road any one know the history and demise of it.

Also just below the church on the left where the new estate was built in the 60,s [is it East Bank View] there was an open field that had a large house in the middle.

When my old ma used to take me to town on the 102 or 105 bus she always used to point the house out to me and tell me it was haunted and that a piano used to play on its own at different times of the night.

Was she having me on as i used to be freetened to death when i passed for years after.

[Plain Talker]

cuttsie,

 

the large church (St Paul's, Arbourthorne) on East Bank Road was demolished in the mid seventies, being replaced by a smaller church building, adjacent to the vicarage (which was behind the first church building).

 

St Paul's, Arbourthorne was built as a replacement for the beautiful old baroque St Paul's Church which stood where the Peace Gardens are now, the name of the patron saint being passed on to the Arbourthorne church when the Peace Gardens' church fell into disuse. the church was derelict by the mid 1930s and demolished around that time.

 

The original St Pauls, on Arbourthorne, was built in the mid 1930s, at the same time as the majority of the properties on the Arbourthorne.

 

Dwindling congregation numbers meant the downsizing of the large, draughty old building on East Bank road. A bungalow-like building was put up in the mid seventies to replace it.

 

This 'new' church, not forty years old, has also now become disused, and the two parishes of St Paul's Arbourthorne, and St Leonard's, Norfolk Park have merged, creating one congregation.

 

I was a member there in 1979, when I was confirmed.

[Plain Talker]

PS.

 

the church buildings were replaced with St Paul's Hostel, a group of buildings which housed people with Learning Difficulties.

 

the hostel is here:-

 

http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=53.357403,-1.442766&spn=0.002292,0.004737&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=53.357956,-1.443775&panoid=A9v302i8FKgsApL3hgK5ig&cbp=12,235.15,,0,22.33

 

if you go out of "Streetview" to the pictorial map. you can see the "square" of land that the church stood on, and, just by the building, nestled in the trees, the vicarage and the replacement church.