A planner’s dream and a church’s vision
Thamesmead was the brainchild of the Greater London Council’s city planners: a new town on the south bank of the Thames estuary. Building on marshland east of Woolwich, developers initially experimented in the new urban architecture of the 1960s before returning to more conventional Barrett housing in the 1980s.
Association of Grace Baptist
Churches SE, www.gracebaptists.org
When phase two was built, Titmuss Avenue Baptist Church was planted, with a new building overlooked by high-rise homes and aerial walkways. The initial team under Michael Toogood established a small fellowship that then received wonderful pastoral care through the ministries of Derek French in the later 1980s and Robin Dowling in the 1990s. In the 2000s the church struggled for direction as Sunday attendance (paradoxically) increased.
