Evan Hopkins

On the wall at the front of the church there is a memorial to Rev. Evan Hopkins, the first vicar of HTR. Born in South America, he was an internationally successful mining engineer before training for the ministry.
 
He joined the newly built Holy Trinity Church in 1870 having just married Sarah and together they worked amongst those who had moved into the newly constructed houses in the area  following the recently completed fast rail links to London. Evan’s simplicity of delivery and practical application in preaching soon filled the church.
 
His ministry and that of the church rapidly extended beyond the parish. Evan was one of the founders of the Church Army and Keswick Convention, both organisations that continue to this day.
 
The Church Army established a group in Richmond which was attached to HTR and operated from a Mission Hall in the Lower Mortlake Road. Like the recently formed Salvation Army it attracted people of a different social and educational background to those attending our building in Sheen Park. Periodic joint meetings of the two groups were lively and it is recorded that the decorous and ordered ecclesiastical life of HTR was often upset on these occasions with the ebullient soldiers’ spontaneous shouts of Halleluiah during Services, which startled the respectable home congregation!
 
The continuing development of the national rail network enabled people to travel cheaply and rapidly throughout the country. Evan and friends embraced this development after a few experiments by combining a Lake District holiday with the opportunity for fellowship and Christian teaching, and so the annual Keswick Convention was born.

Today, as we live with rapid changes in society and technology, Evan encourages us to see such challenges as opportunities to develop new ministries - for his generation the opening was accessible rail travel and the disruption to society from rapid urbanisation; for us it could include harnessing opportunities arising from developments in IT, new working patterns, immigration, and the reshaping of the family unit.