St Peter's History: Part Two

1914 to 1929

​​St Peter’s as a daughter-church to Holy Trinity
The fact that the First World War was deeply traumatic for Ely's riverside district, as much as for all Europe, is painfully evident from the War Memorial recording the names of the twenty-one young men killed in the battles of 1914-1918 who had learnt their catechism at St Peter's. During the War, because most of the younger clergy had left to become Chaplains to the armed forces, St Peter's was left in the care of, at first, the Vice-Principal of the Theological College and then Canon Goudge, its Principal, who was later to become Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. His daughter, the novelist and children's writer, Elizabeth Goudge, recalled in her autobiography the cramped living conditions which she and her father encountered when visiting in the Broad Street area.
​Dating from the year 1926, a fine photograph shows a flourishing robed choir of men and boys assembled with their lady organist near the church porch during the curacy of The Revd Frederick Bywaters. Little did they know that St Peter's was soon to experience a crisis threatening its very existence. Its Victorian financial endowments had by then lost much of their value and the Church of England in general was suffering from a lack of adequate funding for its numerous clergy. 
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Soon, Parliament's rejection of the 1928 proposal for a Revised Prayer Book was to cause consternation to many people of a more or less High Church persuasion, including the then Vicar of Holy Trinity, Ely who was a staunch advocate of it. He left Ely for a living in Scotland; the Priest-in-Charge of St Peter's also left soon afterwards and an interregnum ensued in which the Bishop seized the opportunity to amalgamate Ely's two parishes, Holy Trinity and St Mary's, thus cutting costs while achieving, so it was hoped, "concentration of effort". ​
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​Exactly how St Peter's, in its perilous financial state, escaped permanent closure at this time would require extensive research to discover but it appears that, once again, a Vice-Principal of Ely Theological College stepped in as 'Priest-in-Charge'.
Ely Theological College building founded in 1876 now part of the King's School