London’s Alleys: Church Path, CR0
This is a narrow noisome dog-leg of an alley off Croydon’s main shopping street named after a church, but there’s no church around here. It was also once a lot longer than it is and far more wholesome. The name doesn’t come from a church, but something related, a Methodist Chapel.
The history is complicated, but it seems that Methodists probably bought or were given a house in the area when it was mainly large houses and equally large gardens. They initially had a small chapel, but as they owned the whole plot of land, in 1858, they built a much larger chapel to accommodate their growing congregation.
The old chapel became their Sunday school.
The congregation kept growing, and in 1893, they bought a plot of land on London Road, and moved into a brand new church there, where they’ve been ever since.
The old chapel building was temporarily taken over by the military, becoming the headquarters of the Surrey Yeomanry and later the Croydon Stadium for boxing and wrestling. The hall expanded rather oddly in the 1920s when a grand frontage was built facing onto the main shopping street, and the hall was turned into the Prince’s Picture House. People would go in through the grand entrance and then along a corridor into the hall behind.
It closed as a cinema pretty quickly, and reopened in 1930 as a general amusements hall, and later became the Lido Dance Hall. Its final life was as a light industry factory, but you can still see the short-lived cinema entrance, as the large domed roof above the shops.
In the 1980s, the former chapel turned cinema turned factory was finally demolished and replaced with Jessop House, an office block. In 2014, the office block was converted into flats.
Through all this, the alley remained largely untouched, running behind the back of the old hall and on to a road of the same name.
The beginnings of how the long straight alley gained its current layout originates from William Kennard, who opened a small department store on the main shopping street near the alley. The store expanded, and became famous for the extravagant publicity stunts to attract customers.
The store was bought, indirectly, by Debenhams in 1928 and kept expanding, but fell on hard times after WWII. The store was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by the Drummond Centre, which included a replacement Debenhams. The shopping centre was expanded substantially in 2004, which is when the old alley changed its alignment to allow for the addition of the large shopping centre car park at the back.
So today, what was a fairly bright alley behind the shops is now a runt of a path, whose primary feature on a weekday morning was the smell of urine.
It runs down the side of the local shops, turns a corner, and slips behind the back of the old cinema. Where there was once a Sunday school, it is now a car park. It then runs either straight ahead to the back entrances for the shops or turns sideways along the new path created in the 1970s, which leads down to Tamworth Road.
Despite its unpleasant appeal, it’s a busy little alley. It’s just around the corner from a local tram and bus stop, so people seem to use it as a shortcut to get to the shops.
Just hold your nose when visiting.
Church Path, Walthamstow, is MUCH NICER ( Even though the museum next-door is closed for refurbishment )- & much more interesting, too.
Croydon is indeed quite shameful in parts. Especially its central area where public conveniences are few and far between. Definitely not a place with any pride anymore. It has a distinguished history but struggles to hold onto its former pride nowadays