A wooden church

The story of the building of St. Agnes' begins on Thursday, 3rd October, 1878. On that day a meeting had been called together at the National School (now Moseley C of E), 'to consider the best means of providing increased Church accommodation in the parish'. The meeting, to which a large number of people came, was the idea of W. H. Colmore, who was concerned to provide for the rapidly increasing population or Moseley.

Plans were exhibited to enlarge St. Mary's, but found no favour with the meeting. They decided instead to erect a temporary iron church and 'to take steps for the erection of a new church'. A large committee of 24 parishioners was formed to carry out the plans and the proposals received wide publicity in the Birmingham daily newspapers. The initial intention was to build the church on the parish glebe land (where Moseley C of E School now stands), raising the necessary £5-6,000 over a period of three years, while the other important intention was that at least half the seats in the new church would be free of pew rents, so as not to exclude poorer people.

By the end of October an appeal leaflet had been drawn up, advertisements had been entered in the national press for a second-hand iron church, and a local resident, Mr. Francis Willmot, a solicitor who lived at Wake Green, a large House on the corner of Billesley Lane and Wake Green Road, had offered a site for the new church in the midst of his estate, which he was just developing for building. Despite several offers of iron churches, the Committee decided to erect a new, temporary wooden church designed by one of the committee members, Mr. Bettridge, and this was erected on the glebe land in Oxford Road by W. J. Collett, a local builder. By April. 1879 the church was ready for use and furnished with an American organ. It was to be used for services for just over five years and cost some £635, including all the fittings.
When it was sold, the wooden church went to the new parish of St. Mary and St. Ambrose on Pershore Road, where it still stands, now acting as the church hall.

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