Thamesmead was the brainchild of the Greater London Council’s city planners: a new town on the south bank of the Thames estuary. Building on marshland east of Woolwich, developers initially experimented in the new urban architecture of the 1960s before returning to more conventional Barrett housing in the 1980s.
When phase two was built, Titmuss Avenue Baptist Church was planted, with a new building overlooked by high-rise homes and aerial walkways. The initial team under Michael Toogood established a small fellowship that then received wonderful pastoral care through the ministries of Derek French in the later 1980s and Robin Dowling in the 1990s. In the 2000s the church struggled for direction as Sunday attendance (paradoxically) increased.
In 2010, Barry King of Wood Green served a locum pastorate that helped to change the direction of the church. The membership was reviewed, renewed and refreshed with a new sense of purpose. In 2011, Derek Sewell became the new pastor as he and his wife Rachel moved from central London. What has followed has been a steady revitalisation.
