Name/Title
1912/Urch: St Philip's Church, DalstonDescription
JMG notes (May 2026): "St Philip's was in Richmond Road, Dalston, a district of Hackney in East London. This is a postcard of St Philip's around 1905, but the date given for this entry is the date that Leonard Urch became a curate there. He arrived in 1912 just after completing his training for the priesthood at St Stephen's House, Oxford, a college rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.
In her memoir, Kathleen records meeting, in 1915, "two Marvellous Young Men", whom she also describes as "these two up and coming young curates from St Philip's, Dalston". They were Kenneth Grundy and Leonard Urch.
Leonard and Kathleen soon fell in love. The salary Leonard received as a curate at St Philip's must have been extremely small as Kathleen's father refused to let him and Kathleen marry on it; Leonard then had to find two jobs which paid more. Kathleen does not specify whether he retained the connection to St Philip's, but Crockford's Clerical Directory (1917) says his tenure at St Philip's was 1912-1915.
As a small aside, the postcard shows the vicarage as well as the church. Curiously, it has a very noticeable figure in the window, who seems to be a maid doing some cleaning."
The engraving (DIGITAL only) shows the church in its Victorian heyday, an enormous cathedral-type structure. Built in 1841, it was badly damaged in 1940 during the London Blitz and demolished after the war.
