Part 2 looks at the small Anglican mission churches created as Laindon's growing population spread far beyond easy walking distance of St Nicholas.
During the plotland era, Laindon's population became much more scattered. New homes appeared along unmade roads and lanes, often some distance from St Nicholas. Small mission churches allowed worship, Sunday School and community activity to take place closer to where people lived.
In November 1927 St Nicholas' Church Institute opened on the south side of St Nicholas Lane close to the High Road. The opening was performed by the Archdeacon of Southend, the Venerable Percy Baynes, during the rectorship of Rev. Michael Lake.
The Institute was a hall rather than a full parish church and was used for church and community activities. It later became known as St Peter's Hall.
In 1934 a small church dedicated to St Peter was built on the opposite side of St Nicholas Lane. It served as a daughter church or outpost of St Nicholas and stood close to the High Road and the property known as Hiawatha.
Local memories describe St Peter's as a simple timber building. Services and Sunday School were held there, while the hall across the road was in regular demand for social events and children's activities.
The earlier Church Institute continued to serve the congregation and wider community as St Peter's Hall. By the early 1960s it was also being used as a local sub-office for the registration of births, deaths and marriages.
Both the mission church and its hall disappeared during the redevelopment of old Laindon. Their loss removed two buildings that had once been familiar landmarks near the High Road.
Another daughter church of St Nicholas was St Michael's, a timber-framed mission building in the Green Lane area south of Markham's Chase School. It stood close to the edge of woodland known locally as the Plantation.
Like St Peter's, St Michael's was a modest building rather than an elaborate church. Local recollections describe a low roof, a harmonium, Sunday School and regular worship. The mission brought Church of England services to residents living away from Church Hill.
St Michael's was eventually demolished as the old roads and plotland landscape were transformed. Local historians have since regretted that neither St Michael's nor St Peter's was preserved, because their lightweight timber construction might have allowed one to be moved as a surviving example of the area's mission-church tradition.
St Peter's and St Michael's show how the parish adapted to Laindon's rapid growth before the New Town period. St Nicholas remained the mother church, but these smaller buildings were often the places where families attended Sunday School, worshipped close to home and took part in local social life.