St Edmund’s Church, Allenton: A fiery sermon at the church

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St Edmund’s Church, Allenton, was a converted First World War Army hut when Harry Dyer lived in the area as a child. Built on a slope, it was raised on piles at one end, making beneath its hallowed floor an excellent place for a boys’ den. But not everyone shared their enthusiasm – as Harry, of Allestree, recounts.

THE church of St Edmund’s stood on what had previously been a piece of derelict ground known as Lane’s Field.

Whether it had ever been owned by Mr Lane, who was the caretaker-cum-churchwarden I don’t know, but it certainly carried his name.

It was a roughly rectangular field about 150 yards long and 50 wide, with the short side facing the main road and the long side bounded by the end walls of the houses in Allen Street.

This church has now been replaced by an impressive stone building in Sinfin Avenue, a considerable distance away. The old one, for some years after the war, functioned as a church hall. It may not be there at all now. I haven’t been that way for many years.

The field sloped down from the main road and it had therefore been necessary to place the church, which was nothing more than a First World War Army hut, on wooden piles to ensure a flat floor.

The effect of this was that, although the entrance to the church at the front was at ground level, there was a space beneath it at the rear – about 18ins high, supported by the piles. This space tapered off to nothing at the front of the building.

This sort of hideaway was, of course, irresistible to small boys and, as soon as we realised it was there, its possibilities had to be explored.

Our first foray was a complete disaster. The ground beneath the building was bare earth, slightly damp with a remarkable propensity for adhering firmly to our clothing, which was difficult to explain to our parents and we knew full well that if the grown-ups knew where it came from, we would be promptly banned on penalty of all kinds of dire punishment.

A Council of War was therefore necessary to deliberate the situation and find a solutjon. This taxed our brains for some time until someone came up with the suggestion that suitable alterations to a pair of hessian sacks would produce two garments something like a tunic and trousers.

This idea proved harder to implement than we had envisaged but, eventually, we managed to produce something that would suffice.

When sufficient sets had been made, we donned them in the seclusion of the outhouse at the bottom of Hodgy’s garden, that being the nearest to the church, swiftly clambered over the wall and shot under the building.

The suits worked well and, as was our wont, we immediately began to consider ways of converting the space under the church into a den.

Eighteen inches was insufficient space to allow even small boys to sit upright, but this difficulty was overcome by carefully excavating a hole between the piles.

We ultimately ended up with a space about three feet deep which gave a total headroom of nearly four feet. This was led down to by a set of steps cut into the earth.

The soil we excavated was mostly banked up around the sides of the hole and succeeded in stopping most of the draught which, as you may imagine was quite considerable under there.

The remainder was successfully scattered far and wide throughout the village and no-one was any the wiser.

This very satisfactory den was used for some time until, one night, when I suppose we must have been making more noise than usual so that old Mr Lane, going about his duties in the church, heard us and, probably thinking it was rats, came investigating with a torch and his broom handle.

We were chased out of there, collecting sundry bumps and bruises on the way, quietly resolving to take our revenge as soon as maybe. I think that old man Lane thought it was just a one-off escapade and no action was taken to prevent us getting under again.

However, we realised that this was no longer a safe place to be caught and set about getting our own back.

One Wednesday evening, when the midweek service was well under way, we slid beneath once more and lit a small fire at the bottom of our hole. It was not big enough to cause any damage to the floor of the church but, when it was burning nicely, we smothered it with large quantities of damp grass and shot out of there like frantic ferrets, making our way to our normal escape route along the canal bank.

Hodgy, who had been instructed to stay out of this and watch the proceedings from his bedroom, later gave us a very satisfactory report.

As we had calculated, smoke began to seep through the cracks between the floorboards until the assembled congregation, thinking the building was on fire, came rushing out and summoned the fire brigade from Derby.

How and why we got away with that one I shall never understand, but we did and, thankfully, kept a very low profile for a long time afterwards.

Shortly after this, the back of the church was boarded up so that access was no longer possible. But, if the building is still there, I suspect that our den lies undisturbed beneath it.

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This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.