In the beginning...

This attractive and gracious Georgian house stood on the site of Samantha Close and from 1830 was the home of a wealthy merchant named James Foster.

When James died in 1872 the house and the field next door were left to his two nephews, Richard Foster and John Knowles.

Foster and Knowles were business partners as well as being related and decided to donate the field next to the house as a site for a new church.

A rapid increase in the local population
(it doubled between 1871 and 1881) had resulted in a need for additional churches and until Foster and Knowles made their donation a temporary iron church had been built on the corner of Cambridge and Boundary Roads.

Not only did Foster and Knowles provide the site, they paid for building both the church and vicarage.

Against this poplar tree is the last remaining sign of the field in which St.Saviour’s church was built.

If you look carefully you can see the remains of an iron railing which provided protection for the tree from the sheep which once grazed here.

Did you Know?
Many of the trees in our churchyard are ‘listed’ so they can be enjoyed by future generations.

Richard Foster

Richard Foster–the wealthy merchant who with his cousin John Knowles paid for the church went on to give substantial financial support towards the building of St. Michael’s Church,(1885) and paid the entire cost of St.Barnabas Church (1903) both also in Walthamstow.

Richard Foster was a wealthy City merchant who together with his cousin John Knowles paid for the building of St. Saviour’s.

Foster had thought about becoming a priest but decided instead on a career in commerce and like his uncle became extremely wealthy.

Together with his cousin, John Knowles, Foster paid for the building of both the church and the vicarage and provided enough money for an endowment of £100 a year
(this was to help provide a stipend for the vicar).

In the early Victorian period some Christians became concerned that the Church of England had moved too far away from its roots in the Roman Catholic Church.

Generally described as ‘Anglo-Catholic’ they built their churches to emphasise continuity with the past; their services used more elaborate ritual (involving incense in some services) and special robes for the clergy called vestments.

Richard Foster and John Knowles belonged to this group and today St.Saviour’s still retains some aspects of this heritage. However, this type of worship was often viewed with suspicion by some other Christian groups and churches, the local newspaper whilst often speaking in support of St. Saviour’s clergy would also equally as often denounce its ‘Popish practices’.

In fact, in the early years services were regularly subject to violent disruption from protestors and a group of young men from the congregation regularly stood guard outside armed with wooden staves and crowbars to deter would-be troublemakers!

The Architect Francis Dolman

Determined to have only the best for St. Saviour’s, Foster and Knowles engaged the services of the architect Francis Dolman.

Dolman had been a pupil of Augustus Welby Pugin, probably the greatest of the early Victorian church architects, and was known as a superb draughtsman. He probably knew Richard Foster from working on a church scheme in Stoke Newington for which Foster had helped raise funds. Dolman was better known as an architectural historian than an architect although he also designed two churches in Clapton (St. Matthew’s in 1869 and All Saints in 1871) just before working on St. Saviour’s.

The spire of St. Matthews can just be seen across the marshes from St. Saviour’s vicarage garden. Dolman positioned the church very carefully –the tower is off-set in such a way that before a huge spurt of housebuilding in the 1880s it would have dominated the traveller’s view of Walthamstow as approached either along Lea Bridge Road or across Walthamstow Marshes by train.
The church is on a raised gravel platform which also assists in giving it a dominance in the local streetscape.

A Gothic Church