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On the night of 16th-17th April, 1941, almost seven hundred German bombers attacked South and Central London for nearly eight hours.
Wartime bombing in 1941 killed more than one thousand civilians and seriously injured more twice that number. Among the buildings hit were eighteen hospitals and thirteen churches, one of which was Chelsea Old Church.
Close to the centre of government in Westminster, and proxmity to power stations and railway lines meant that Chelsea had already suffered considerable damage. Taking its size into account, Chelsea was one of the most heavily bombed boroughs in London, with only Holborn and Shoreditch being hit by a heavier tonnage of bombs per acre.
On the night of 16th-17th April, 1941, five parachute mines, a number of other high-explosive bombs and many hundreds of incendiaries fell within Chelsea’s boundaries, in an area of about six hundred and sixty acres.
Chelsea Old Church was guarded by a party of volunteers from the congregation and nearby business premises formed by the Vicar, the Rev. Ralph Sadleir, who took his turn on the duty rota and arranged for them to use his study on the first floor of Petyt House as the Fire Party Post or headquarters. Arthur Mallett, the only survivor of the six firewatchers on duty the night the church was destroyed, says he told the Vicar the room was too good to use for such a purpose.
“There was a fine polished table to sit at with our tea,” he said, “and it was furnished with his own belongings, books, a grand carpet and so on.”
Arthur Mallett
Next morning, as two other firewatchers came round the corner into Cheyne Walk they were knocked down by a length of garden railing. They saw flames leaping up in a thinning dust haze. Near Danvers Street in a shallow crater in the road a gas main was on fire. And then it came to them both: ‘The Old Church has gone!” There was a jagged stump of brickwork and projecting timbers silhouetted where the eye had expected the massive square tower.
Of the whole Church, the More Chapel was the least heavily blasted by the bombing in 1941. For 9 years the congregation carried on its worship in a ward of the adjoining hospital.
In 1950 the More Chapel, with extensions, was reopened for service; the Chancel and Lawrence
Chapel were restored and re-dedicated in May 1954; and the whole Church reconsecrated in May
1958 by the Lord Bishop of London in the presence of H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
