Hunting Oswald Chambers in Clapham Common
I’m recently returned from a research trip in which I went hunting for Oswald Chambers in London’s Clapham Common.
Obviously, not for the man himself, he’s been dead since 1917.
But I was looking for his environs–where he lived during the four years he spent in London as principal of the Bible Training College. I’m writing a book that touches on his life and I needed some first hand information.
I had the address where the Bible Training College (BTC) was housed: 45 Clapham Common, and with my intrepid patron of the arts (my husband) caught the Underground for Clapham Common itself.
By chatting with a worker, I learned that particular line, the Northern, was the oldest and thus one the Chambers family–that would include wife Biddy and daughter Kathleen–would have taken. It’s also the tube station BTC students who did not live there would have ridden.
Small matters, but pertinent to my tale.
Clapham Common is the largest park in London and the northern side is lined with beautiful townhouse mansions overlooking the park. Nearby Speke Hall was where the League of Prayer conducted their meetings. Oswald Chambers spoke there often in the first decade of the twentieth century.
During those early years, Chambers traveled about the British Isles speaking. He journeyed to the United States and also Japan. He spent six months teaching and working with God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio, and while there savored the experience of actually living in community with other believers.
Author David McCasland in Oswald Chambers: Abandoned for God, recounts how the Ohio time changed Chambers’ thoughts on teaching about the Christian life:
“Oswald’s months at God’s Bible School had brought home the value of day-by-day interaction in an atmosphere of commitment to God. In community living, more was “caught” than “taught.” During every Cincinnati camp meeting he had been most impressed by the unselfish work of the students who cooked and cleaned. In a class he could teach people to study and preach. In a home he could help them learn to serve.”
Members of the Prayer League agreed with him and decided to fund such a school in London, where some 25 students could live with Oswald, Biddy and Kathleen and study God’s word in depth. They found a beautiful home at 45 Clapham Common called The Cedars, according to Katherine Ashe in her booklet The Book of the College.
We found it, too.
It’s a lovely building, three stories high, and no surprise, has a giant cedar tree between it and the busy park road. Between the tree limbs, you can glimpse Clapham Common stretching to the south.
I walked up the steps (two down from those potted plants) and stood at the bright red door, feeling something like a stalker, until I noticed a simple blue British Heritage marker affirming I’d found the right spot.
I admired what view there was and tried to imagine Oswald, Biddy and Kathleen going up and down the cement steps, not to mention all the BTC folks whose names have become so familiar to me: Eva Spinks, Katherine Ashe, Mary Riley, Gladys Ingram and Jimmy Hanson.
Other than the cars going past, it was a quiet building, the air cool on a sunny day. And yet, for four years students sat under Oswald Chambers’ tutelage–students who went on to work as missionaries throughout the world.
I suppose this was an Oswald Chambers pilgrimage under the guise of research. Click to Tweet
I took photos of the shops along the street, trying to image life here 100 years ago.
And then we walked away to find another spot important to Oswald and Biddy Chambers. London looked different with someone else’s life in mind.
Kathleen Chambers at 45 Clapham Common, 1914; Wheaton College Special Collections
Do you like to visit the spots where people you admire lived or worked? Is it a pilgrimage if you just stop in?
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A London hunt for Oswald Chambers Click to Tweet
The Bible Training College’s London home Click to Tweet
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