St. John the Evangelist

Coulsdon Parish Church - Old Coulsdon, Surrey

You are in the lobby, the inner part of the porch. Move forwards in to the nave of the old church or turn left for the entrance to the ringing room, right to view a crusader's coffin lid or about to leave the church.

Originally the main entrance to the Church was through a South porch. In Victorian times an entrance was made through a West porch and thence under the Tower into the Nave. The internal arrangement of the Tower was that the bells were in the top chamber, the middle chamber housed the clock and the ringers were at ground level. When the new church was built, in the late 1950s, it covered the old main entrance. The Victorian porch was replaced with the present larger one in the early 1960s. The ringing chamber was moved to its present position on the middle floor in the Summer of 1965 although the weight driven clock was not removed until the Summer of 1972. The present clock is no more than the dial, hands and an electric motor. There is still an extension which allows one bell to be chimed from the ground floor.

In the doors shown here there are commemorative glass panels with the Coulsdon 1300 logo which were made to celebrate the Church's recorded history from a charter in the second half of the 7th. century to 1975 AD. As shown in the sketch it is a wheat seed on a Saxon shield symbolising the continually renewed Church of Christ in this place.

Just visible through the upper panels are the nave's chandelier, the arch marked on the main site's map of the church and, on the right, part of the arch which now leads to the new church.

This was taken in Advent (2007) which is why there are no flowers on the table and why the doors, normally open during a service, have been allowed to close against the cold wind. When the churches were redecorated in late 2009 this area was one of those to be carpeted. To the left is a container with copies of the Parish Magazine.