War Memorials – St Stephen-on-the-Downs, Langley Vale
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St Stephen’s, Langley Vale
St Stephen-on-the-Downs is a daughter church of St Martin of Tours. The first record of a Christian community in what, until the 1930s, known as Langley Bottom – a part of St Martin’s parish cut off from the rest of Epsom by the Downs – dates from 1906, when worshippers met in a private house. In 1919, what is now Langley Vale gained its first church building. This, as then common for developing areas, was a corrugated iron hut, which was to survive until the present St. Stephen’s was dedicated on 17 December 1961.
The former ‘Tin Church’ of St Stephen’s, Langley Vale
Image courtesy of Hazel Walker.
Interior of St Stephen-on-the-Downs
Image courtesy of Judith Mitchell ©2020
The design of the church’s WW2 memorial is such a match for the 1961 building that it seems clear that it was new then. It is not currently known if it replaced some memorial in the earlier church.
The memorial plaque in St Stephen-on-the-Downs
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(All but Lance Serjeant Ronald Ryan MM are also commemorated on the parish’s principal WW2 memorial in St Martin’s.)
Image courtesy of Judith Mitchell ©2020