St. John's Oakdale Road ......... a fragment of our history
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St. John's is one of two adjacent parishes, carved early this century out of the area of a much older ecclesiastical parish of St. John the Baptist, Colwick, which stood to the north-east of Nottingham, along the Trent Valley, and both unusually and inconveniently given the same dedication. Old Colwick That original Church stood since medieval times close by old Colwick Hall - once home to the Poet Byron's family - but over the years population shifts left the Church stranded at one deserted end of a large area. Since its few remaining parishioners dwelt nearer to the churches of Netherfield, and Carlton it was first planned to make the church redundant, but successive Bishops' Commissions eventually decided instead to move the centre of worship to where the people now lived. Colwick-in-the-Vale... The old parish had covered an area along the Trent valley, and also much of the hillside overlooking. The boundaries, curious today, derived from the late middle ages when settlement patterns were very different. At first a new Parish of St. John the Baptist, now Colwick-in-the-Vale, was set up with a church building much closer to Netherfield St. George, intended to serve the remaining inhabited area of old Colwick both in the Vale and on the Hill. But in a district so geographically divided, it was soon felt necessary to provide a second place of worship. The Rector of Colwick petitioned the diocesan authorities with a plan to build a Mission Church here at "Colwick-on-the-Hill", in what was becoming a new residential suburb of Nottingham, and a dual-purpose building was erected to serve the people who lived up on the hill. ... and On-the Hill That 'Hall Church' as it became known was named locally Colwick-on-the-Hill, to distinguish it from the Vale Church. An inelegant and unlovely structure, built with difficulty under wartime restrictions, it had a brief and fraught history marked by all sorts of problems, mostly originating in its utilitarian construction. But for all that, by so much as it was difficult to use, in proportion it became the more deeply loved and held a very special place in the hearts of the people. A fine instance of often we come to value most what we must struggle hardest to gain. It became a lively place of worship in a growing community: in time also the centre of a new conventional district, paving the way for the present St. John's Oakdale Road. The New Church at last... The present building arose in an extraordinary burst of concerted activity in the time of the Revd. John Nichols, an assistant Curate at Newark Parish Church who arrived here as priest-in-charge, but within five years of hectic planning and fund-raising became the first Vicar of what was then proudly announced in the magazine 'Church Illustrated' as both "The Newest Parish Church in the Anglican Communion", and, in view of the many gifts sent from churches and Diocese all around the Anglican Communion, the "Church of all the Nations". The work began in 1956. To be fair, not everyone was altogether happy with the style of ministry and the surrounding parishes lost support as the new parish flourished. But St. John's fresh enthusiasm knew no bounds. There had already been queues to get in to Evening Prayer at the Hall Church; now the parish burst into new life. John Nicholls drew huge congregations, hosted one of the first BBC outside broadcasts of worship, extended the staff and ministry, and very nearly invented the charismatic movement two decades early. And since then ...? We are still here. The new church was huge, in keeping with the expansionist spirit of the age, and the expectations of a growing community in booming post-war Britain. That our society might change so rapidly, or the particular circumstances of the Church of England might alter so remarkedly, quite escaped the people building new lives in a new world. We cannot and do not hold that against them, but inevitably the intervening years have seen growing difficulties for the church they built here - nearly all in connection with the costs of maintaining such extensive premises in a small ecclesiastical parish. In 1992 we finally agreed to sell the old Hall Church site (now occupied by retirement apartments) and re-ordered the 'new' building so that all our activities may take place under its one roof. It is more cost-effective, so we can better afford to sustain it, while devoting time to a ministry of prayer, service and teaching in the local community, instead of only maintainence. And the Church remains: a far from mute testimony to the vision of its builders; worthy indeed of their place in a tradition of Christian worship that may well go back a thousand years, and worthy of their trust in God's future.

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