Revd. Alfred B Goulden was sent to serve the parish, a man with great determination, a great talent for fund-raising and publicity, and who certainly had a way with words. He wrote colourfully about the conditions of the parish, some said his methods were sensationalist and misleading.   This is an extract from his description of the parish when he arrived:

“It is a poor parish in the middle of poor parishes, only to be distinguished by surpassing all others in poverty; what few shops there are share in the desperate aspect of depression.  The wretched, ruinous houses with battered doors, dingy broken windows and blackened walls, cluster thickly together in murky courts and alleys. Foul sewers pour out disagreeable smells.  Rotten refuse lies in every direction. All disagreeable smelling trades seem to be actively practised in the neighbourhood. Here they smoke haddocks, boil bones, slaughter horses, make ‘catgut’, soap and whatever else can make a parish disagreeable.  …

“Even the children and mere infants sprawling in the gutter look up at passers-by with pinched and ugly faces; evil eyed men leer out of the open doors of the public house; women in faded and tattered finery, with awful history written in their faces, lounge about the dark archways and doors.  Down these narrow and dirty streets, costermongers, tramps, labourers and thieves are huddled together.  A small low room suffices for a whole family, streets and lanes abound where it would be hard to find a person who had not served his time in some prison or reformatory.  Immorality of the coarsest type is regarded with utter indifference. …”

Revd. Goulden applied himself energetically, his first task to find suitable premises. At that stage there was very little money, and the only premises that could be afforded was a dilapidated and decayed stable which still accommodated horses.  St Alphege Sunday School opened in 1873 and before long there were 160 children in attendance “all in rags and tatters huddle together best they can.”  Soon after, simple Sunday evening services began for adults and soon 50 people were attending, mostly the parents of the Sunday School children.  Named The Manger, these premises were limited and clearly larger and more suitable premises had to be found, but, with an annual endowment of only £150, it was not easy.  Eventually, a lease was taken on ‘The Shamrock’ a former public-house with a dilapidated skittle alley behind which had lost its license due to fights and assaults that had continually taken place on the premises.  Money was so scarce the clergy acted as carpenters and joiners and on 13 July 1873 ‘The Temporary Church of St Alphege, Southwark’ opened.  Bible classes and weeknight services were held.  Sunday evening services were crowded:  “black-sliders, open profligates, drunkards, wife-beaters, pick-pockets, crowded into the fold”.

Day schools for both girls and boys were opened but these were soon integrated into the Board Schools which were being built.  A crèche was started where working mothers could leave their babies, a safer alternative to baby farms and the care of older siblings.  Convalescent children of the parish were served meat dinners in one of the school rooms, and orphans, children of widows and those whose parents were out of work were given soup dinners several times a week in a house rented especially. Next door a Club for Working Men was started and by 1893 there were 40 organisations that the Mission had set up and running which included Mothers’ Meetings, Clubs for Working Boys, a Home for Working Boys, a Home for Working Girls, a Home for Homeless Boys, an Orphanage for Little Girls, and a Night Refuge for Women and Girls.