I remember All Souls as I went there as a youngster, aged about 6 I guess. I cried my eyes out the first time. I later joined the choir and was there until I was 10 when we moved to Lower Bevendean. I remember a Father Bott, the sacristan Mr Rhodes and Peter Kite - a very good tenor in the Choir. I think a Mr Taylor was organist and choir master. I remember solemn evensong with Benediction, and priests prostrate on the Altar steps, which used to fascinate me. The incense used to get up my nose in the Choir. At morning service Mr Rhodes used to follow the Vicar very swiftly down the aisle as he sprinkled holy water. I was confirmed at the Church.  I remember the elaborate Nativity Play with proper make up and clothes. We dressed in the crypt where the tombs were; I always found it very creepy. We performed the play in Church on two nights and somewhere nearby for the elderly.  I used to enter the Choir Vestry from the Hereford St entrance at the rear of the Church. This was below the level of Eastern Road and on the same level as the Crypt I think.  Mr Rhodes ran a boys' club for members of the choir. I lived next door to him in a flat in Hereford Street and used to sometimes play with his daughter Catherine.  I went to St Mary's C of E School in Mount St, although All Souls School was available in Essex St. I do remember the school caretaker's son, John Brookshaw, who was in the Church choir. I used to go to Saturday morning pictures with him at the Odeon Kemp Town.  Sunday School was in the afternoon at All Souls School. I went to that as well as morning and evening service.  My wife and I visited All Souls Church in about 1965, the year we got married. This must have been not long before it was demolished. Mr Munch, former Head of All Souls School, was welcoming people and handing out hymn books. It was sad to see such a small congregation and the extensive choir was no longer. In fact it is still sad to see much of my early childhood gone with modern redevelopment, including my old school.  The father of a friend of mine recalls working at the Church at the time of demolition, and all the tombs being removed. We have moved around as a family but finally came to Kent. Our first visit to the small local church here reminded me of my time at All Souls as it had, and still has, a large choir and all that goes with High Church traditions.  My wife is a retired C of E priest and we worship at the larger, local Parish Church where she assists, and she also looks after a local village Church attached to the benefice.  I still look back at my time at All Souls with affection and gratitude. I have a photograph (circa 1953) of the Vicar (with Beretta) and some of the choir and servers. I have also kept a book presented to me at Christmas 1953 (my last Christmas at the Church) by the Choirmaster for good attendance.

Dennis Beeney asked about the tombs. I asked Len Brown ex foreman of Woodvale cemetry. The tombs were removed and the bones were boxed and re-buried in a mass grave at Bear Road cemetry. He recalled that the oldest tomb was for a man in his thirties who died in 1837.

I was a choirboy at All Souls during the early 1960s along with several other lads who lived in or around Essex Street and Hereford Street, and I was attending Queens Park School at that time. The tombs were in the crypt under the church and us youngsters found the area rather frightening to be in alone. We recieved a modest payment for being in the choir (about 10 shillings a month, 50 pence in today's money) but at that time it was a useful amount.