John Stansfeld and Headington
John Stansfeld, who was a doctor as well as a clergyman, was Vicar of St Ebbe’s from 1912 to 1926. He had already done good work with the poor of Bermondsey, but had to leave London because of his children’s ill-health, something which must have made him very conscious of the need for children to have clean air.
Stansfeld organized clubs and helped the unemployed of St Ebbe’s. Then in 1918 when he lost his wife in an influenza epidemic, he used the money that they had been saving for a trip to the Holy Land to buy 20 acres of land off Quarry Road to give the children from the St Ebbe’s slums a chance of camping in the countryside at the weekend. He then put up a tree-house called the Crow’s Nest.
The men of Quarry parish built a small chapel with a thatched roof for the children in Quarry Road near the vicarage. This chapel was known as St Ebba’s and the postcard below (postmarked 2 July 1943) shows its interior. It was demolished in the 1950s.
Later Stansfeld installed some rough huts or bungalows where whole families from St Ebbe’s could go for a country holiday but which would allow the breadwinner to walk to his work back home.
After Stansfeld left St Ebbe’s in 1926, temporary housing was put on the camping site. Since the 1930s it has been leased by Birmingham Education Authority, and is now known as the Stansfeld Field Study Centre.
Website of Stansfeld Field Study Centre