Sandcross Church started during World War 2 as a missionary outreach, from a Gospel Hall in Redhill, to children in Woodhatch, Reigate. They met every week in the cricket pavilion at Hartswood until they filled it! Not surprisingly their parents were also attracted and the first meetings of the Church also took place in the pavilion.
By 1947, an adult group was large enough to buy the plot of land in Sandcross Lane - and build a wooden structure similar to an army officers mess! This became known as Sandcross Hall. Ten years later the church had grown sufficiently to step out in faith with a new building which was dedicated by Major General Sir William Dobbie.
Sir William had become a Christian as a teenager at Charterhouse School and after his final retirement from the Army wrote:
I then that night accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour, my companion and my Lord ... and from that day to this through all the ups and downs of army life, I have never been able to doubt the reality of that transaction.
After a distinguished service in the First World War, he retired but in August 1939 at age 60 he offered himself again for service. Six months later he was invited to become Governor of Malta where for two years more than 2,000 air raids sought in vain to bomb Malta into submission.
Winston Churchill referred to General Dobbie in the House of Commons as a Cromwellian figure fighting with his Bible in one hand and sword in the other. In Dobbie’s own account of the siege of Malta in 1944 (when the adult church that formed Sandcross was meeting in the pavillion) he concluded with these words:
I was in Malta. I can speak from first hand knowledge about that. I do say if it had not been for God's help I do not think Malta would be today in British hands. The odds against us were too great. The whole thing is a miracle--a long drawn out miracle. The siege lasted for two and a half years, and the odds against us, especially in the early days, were enormous. In the latter days the dangers were equally great but of a different kind. Our food supplies very nearly ran out and it was desperately difficult to get the food through the Mediterranean to Malta, but we just got it through, thanks to the devotion of the Navy and the Merchant Navy. We just got enough through to enable Malta to turn the corner.
Gentlemen, I think it would be very wrong of me, who owes so much to God through Jesus Christ for what God has done for me, if I didn't express publicly my gratitude to Him for what He did for us and our people during the siege of Malta. He means much to me and all through my army service He has meant much to me and has, ever since I was a boy, before I went into the Army. I met Jesus Christ and took Him for my Saviour and He has been everything to me in war and peace from that day to this. Without His help one could not have competed with the problems and difficulties with which one was faced in Malta.
May I very humbly commend Him to you, Gentlemen. We all need Him, every one, without exception, and He is only too anxious to give us the help we need.
This is the God Dobbie served, and the God Sandcross Church exists to make known.
