St Paul's Church, Stratford is a

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

church in

Stratford, London Stratford is a town in east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. Until 1965 it was within the historic county of Essex. Part of the Lower Lea Valley, Stratford is situated 6 miles (10 km) east-northeast of Char ...

. It had its origins in a Sunday School opened in Stratford New Town by a City Missionary around 1850, for which a building was constructed on Queen Street by Samuel Gurney in 1853, within the parish of St John's Church, Stratford. St John's vicar William Holloway was ambivalent about the mission and so friction arose when the vicar of All Saints, A J Ram, bought a site for the mission to build a church, initially an iron hall in 1859 and a permanent church in 1864, both dedicated to St Paul. The latter was built with assistance from

Thomas Fowell Buxton Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet (1 April 1786Olwyn Mary Blouet, "Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, first baronet (1786–1845)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., May 201accessed 25 April 20 ...

and Raymond Pelly. The permanent church was then assigned a separate parish in 1865, split from that of St John's. The church was destroyed by a

V-weapon V-weapons, known in original German as (, German: "retaliatory weapons", "reprisal weapons"), were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly strategic bombing and/or aer ...

in 1945, but was replaced by a new building, consecrated in 1953. St Paul's parish opened a mission church of St Mark to provide services for factory girls, opening in 1877, building a permanent building in 1891, suffering bomb damage and finally being sold to the Methodist Church after 1945. Its parish is now known as 'St Paul and St James, Stratford', after the congregation of St James' Church, Forest Gate moved from St John's to St Paul's in 2014 (the former parish area of St James' instead moved to St Saviour's, also in 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Pauls Church Stratford Paul's 1850 establishments in England 1865 establishments in England Religious organizations established in 1865 Churches completed in 1864 19th-century Church of England church buildings