Straight to the Heart

Colliers Wood is normally famous for the wrong reasons.

If you aren’t from the UK then you probably haven’t heard of Colliers Wood at all. If you are, then you probably know it as home to the office block which was voted “Britain’s ugliest building” or as the place where looters set fire to PC World and attacked police cars last summer. You may know it as one of Southwest London’s lesser-loved communities, but that’s only because you don’t remember the things that God does. And I got excited last night when he started to remind us.

Nine hundred years ago, a group of Christians built a monastery at the heart of the community which is now known as Colliers Wood. On 3rd May 1117AD they opened Merton Priory on the bank of the River Wandle and started praying that God would work in power in their community. Day after day and year after year, the monks of Merton Priory asked God to bless their part of England and use it to change the world. In the years which followed, that’s exactly what he did.

Merton Priory became a spiritual home to King John I, and it was from there that he was forced to sign the Magna Carta at nearby Runnymede in 1215AD. The document which gave birth to modern democracy was therefore bound up in the prayers of the monks at Merton Priory who gave King John guidance when his noblemen rebelled against him.

King Henry III also made the priory his spiritual home, and it was in the Chapter House of Merton Priory that he signed the Statutes of Merton in 1236AD, the first and founding documents of English Common Law. The dawn of the modern legal system can therefore also be linked to the monks’ faithful prayers.

The monks continued to serve the community which is now known as Colliers Wood, holding daily intercession for their area and becoming known for their faith for miraculous healing. King Henry VI was crowned at Merton Priory, and thgere is considerable evidence that he played a part in its healing ministry.

But in 1538, King Henry VIII closed the priory by force, confiscated its land, and literally dismantled it stone by stone in order to build his own palace at nearby Nonsuch. Merton Priory and its monks were forgotten by the world, but they were not forgotten by God.

In the 1970s and 80s, the ruins of the Chapter House of Merton Priory were found and excavated. Although they are now situated underneath the A24 flyover and sandwiched between a Sainsbury’s hypermarket on one side and a Pizza Hutt on the other, the ruins can be accessed by a few groups each year. Last night a group from Queens Road Church were permitted to hold a carol service there, and its past began to be revived. Sixty people. Forty of them following in the footsteps of the monks, praying for God to work in their community and bless and use Colliers Wood beyond their wildest dreams. Twenty of them non-church guests who had been drawn by the venue and by the rumour that God still loves Colliers Wood.

As I took part in the carol service amidst the ancient ruins and heard Sean Hammond, leader of the Queens Road Colliers Wood Pastorate, sharing his vision for a fresh wave of prayer for the tens of thousands of people who now live within a mile of Merton Priory, I started to get very excited.

I felt God’s reminder that even if we think of Colliers Wood in terms of ugly office blocks or rioting, then he doesn’t at all. He still remembers what happened in Colliers Wood many generations ago, and he is still committed to answering those monks’ prayers. He is raising up a new generation who will continue to pray where they left off, and who will ask him to bless Southwest London and, through it, change the world.