St Luke’s Church LEP

St Luke’s is a Victorian building which has been extensively updated. It was founded to serve the rather rural area of ‘New Chesterton’, which was at that time surrounded by fields, allotments and orchards all the way out to Histon. An Industrial School was opened in 1850 on the site and church services were held in that building. As the population of the area grew, a wooden church was built alongside the Industrial School school in 1866. Money was then raised to build a more permanent stone church building. Work on this began in 1873 and Bishop Woodford consecrated the first part of the stone church on 19^th Oct 1874 (St Luke’s Day). Work on the final part of the church and its spire was started in 1884 and completed and consecrated in 1885.

St Luke’s continued to serve the rapidly developing area as the separate new parish of St Luke’s Chesterton. A collection of historical and personal memories of those first one hundred years can be read here. In 1982 St Luke’s Chesterton joined the neighbouring parish of St Giles’ Cambridge and the Parish of the Ascension was formed.

At the end of the 1980’s the neighbouring Victoria Road Congregational Church building was demolished, and that congregation started to use St Luke’s Church building regularly. Since 2005, the church community has been formed by the uniting of congregations from the Church of England and the United Reformed Church traditions into a Local Ecumenical Partnership (LEP), worshipping together.

After extensive refurbishment the Church building now comprises four community rooms in addition to the Church space. The community rooms are known as St Luke’s Church Centre. The Old School building that has stood on the site since the early 20th century, has been completely refurbished and now houses the Ascension Parish Office and offers further rooms for use by the community.