St Peter's History: Part Three
1930 to 1964
"St Peter’s within the United Benefice of Holy Trinity and St Mary
The Cathedral Lady Chapel continued to provide a home to the "Holy Trinity" part of the United Benefice until 1938 after which members of its congregation were expected to join that of St Mary's or, alternatively, St Peter's, where some of its liturgical furnishings and equipment found a home. From 1930 consistently until 1974 a succession of stipendiary Curates was allocated to St Peter's by the Vicar of Ely's United Benefice in accordance with the Trust Deed.
The amalgamation of Holy Trinity parish with St Mary's cannot be assumed to have been popular at St Peter's. A letter of protest against it is extant in the Cambridgeshire County Archives, many of the signatories of which had addresses in Ely's riverside district. However, St Peter's throughout the 1930s and well into the post-war period continued to benefit from access to the multi-functional parish room of Holy Trinity. The Guild of St Peter's seems to have fizzled out before the Second World War but other Church organisations arose in the United Parish which were accessible to members of St Peter's, notably a Sunday evening Youth Fellowship which celebrated its twenty-first birthday in 1959. St Peter's Sunday School, which functioned in Broad Street Girls' Junior School until the early 1950s, joined forces in the middle of that decade with the one run by St Mary's at Central Hall in Market Street.
The Cathedral Lady Chapel continued to provide a home to the "Holy Trinity" part of the United Benefice until 1938 after which members of its congregation were expected to join that of St Mary's or, alternatively, St Peter's, where some of its liturgical furnishings and equipment found a home. From 1930 consistently until 1974 a succession of stipendiary Curates was allocated to St Peter's by the Vicar of Ely's United Benefice in accordance with the Trust Deed.
The amalgamation of Holy Trinity parish with St Mary's cannot be assumed to have been popular at St Peter's. A letter of protest against it is extant in the Cambridgeshire County Archives, many of the signatories of which had addresses in Ely's riverside district. However, St Peter's throughout the 1930s and well into the post-war period continued to benefit from access to the multi-functional parish room of Holy Trinity. The Guild of St Peter's seems to have fizzled out before the Second World War but other Church organisations arose in the United Parish which were accessible to members of St Peter's, notably a Sunday evening Youth Fellowship which celebrated its twenty-first birthday in 1959. St Peter's Sunday School, which functioned in Broad Street Girls' Junior School until the early 1950s, joined forces in the middle of that decade with the one run by St Mary's at Central Hall in Market Street.
The Sanctuary before 1950s
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St Peter's came through the Second World War under the care of The Revd William George Harwood, a practical handyman as well as a priest, whose Curacy was unexpectedly extended to cover the years 1940-1947. Around the middle of that period, a sixteen-year-old called John Harnwell arrived at St Peter's and, after having trained as a motor-mechanic during his National Service, rejoined its altar-serving team in 1948 of which he remained a member until his death in 2016. He is greatly missed for the incalculable amount of voluntary work he contributed to St Peter's in that period.
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The Sanctuary today
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The Revd Geoffrey Alder Field who served as Priest-in-Charge from 1950-1954, left a lasting mark on St Peter's in another way. It was he who extended the high altar to its present, unusually, wide dimensions, donating the new set of altar-frontals required. He also adapted a richly-carved credence table, originally from Holy Trinity, to form a Lady Altar set against the Comper Screen.
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Statues of John Fisher, Thomas More and the Sacred Heart
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How far back in its history does St Peter's attachment to Anglo-Catholicism in fact go? Probably we would not recognise the Prayer Book services conducted in the first half-century of its existence as markedly High Church in character. There is no mention of a thurible in the Inventory of 1925. On the other hand, the magnificence of the Comper Screen proclaims the Oxford Movement allegiance of at least one of the earliest clergymen to minister there and evidence also exists in a Register of Services of a push towards more frequent celebration of the Eucharist at St Peter's in the 1920s.
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By the time in the 1940s when John Harnwell first remembered it, the church boasted an array of altar-servers which ranged from "Subdeacon" and "Master of Ceremonies" down to "Boat Boy". The personnel was recruited largely from students at the Theological College which maintained a close association with St Peter's until its closure in 1964.
