Micklepage - inside the Farmhouse

Camberwell & Micklepage
by George Gibson

In a Leaflet issued just before 1939, George Gibson wrote of his Experience in Camberwell and Hopes for Micklepage.

For four years now we have lived in, and tried to serve among a mass demonstration of depravity and degradation: the product of a Christian country: an island of stinking tenement houses which in the main, breed dirt, disease, apathy and vice. At first hand, as chairman and members of the local school managers, of care and after-care committees, and by attempting pastoralia, we have wrestled with the daily tragedies of our district. Foul drains: defective roofs, rent arrears: threatening tallymen: domestic complications: semi-starvation: holiday hunger: birth and superstition: death and fatalism, combine to make a situation in which war is by no means a major catastrophe.

A further step was to look beyond the Island for some spot in the country where activities complementary to those in the town could be carried on. Life in town could at best be only half a life.

The Oxford Conference has called for new, bold and prophetic experiments in Christian living. Already we have been led to shape our life in Camberwell along community lines: we now envisaged an even more thorough-going community in the country as part of the Mission Family.

We thought of . the whole as an experiment, emerging through the very force of circumstances, of the nature demanded at Oxford. With only a vision to support us, we scoured a wide circle around London.

A detailed account of our efforts and of our attempt now seen to be false, to obtain a government subsidy, cannot be ventured. Sufficient to record that, when negotiations upon which we had long worked collapsed, two friends offered us the debt-free part of Micklepage Farm at Nuthurst as a gift.

Not only did we thus acquire 20 acres of land, two guest houses, barns and certain equipment, but two co-workers came, without condition, full time into the Mission Family.

North Camberwell ... Micklepage

A little incident come to mind, the Bishop walking solemnly to the Chapel and having his mitre knocked off by a baby's frozen nappy on the washing line... There was plenty of 'love and laughter'... but also, of course, the Cross, at the heart of Christian community.

MICKLEPAGE MEMORIES	Camberwell & Micklepage by George Gibson

In a Leaflet issued just before 1939, George Gibson wrote of his Experience in Camberwell and Hopes for Micklepage. [back] For four years now we have lived in, and tried to serve among a mass demonstration of depravity and degradation: the product of a Christian country: an island of stinking tenement houses which in the main, breed dirt, disease, apathy and vice. At first hand, as chairman and members of the local school managers, of care and after-care committees, and by attempting pastoralia, we have wrestled with the daily tragedies of our district. Foul drains: defective roofs, rent arrears: threatening tallymen: domestic complications: semi-starvation: holiday hunger: birth and superstition: death and fatalism, combine to make a situation in which war is by no means a major catastrophe.

A further step was to look beyond the Island for some spot in the country where activities complementary to those in the town could be carried on. Life in town could at best be only half a life. The Oxford Conference has called for new, bold and prophetic experiments in Christian living. Already we have been led to shape our life in Camberwell along community lines: we now envisaged an even more thorough-going community in the country as part of the Mission Family. We thought of . the whole as an experiment, emerging through the very force of circumstances, of the nature demanded at Oxford. With only a vision to support us, we scoured a wide circle around London.		A detailed account of our efforts and of our attempt now seen to be false, to obtain a government subsidy, cannot be ventured. Sufficient to record that, when negotiations upon which we had long worked collapsed, two friends offered us the debt-free part of Micklepage Farm at Nuthurst as a gift. Not only did we thus acquire 20 acres of land, two guest houses, barns and certain equipment, but two co-workers came, without condition, full time into the Mission Family. North Camberwell ... Micklepage

Agnes Blackhall writes of a few memories of their two years, before Lawrie was appointed Vicar of West Wittering:
My overall conviction was that it was 'good' for my spiritual growth, however frustrating for my tidy mind ...The more I think of our time at Micklepage, the more my own shortcomings flood into my memory ...I now know that I wouldn't have missed it for anything...		A little incident come to mind, the Bishop walking solemnly to the Chapel and having his mitre knocked off by a baby's frozen nappy on the washing line... There was plenty of 'love and laughter'... but also, of course, the Cross, at the heart of Christian community.

[home] [accommodation & facilities] [booking] [history] [memories]