Sir – The recent opening of the Russian Orthodox Church of St Nicholas Wondermaker in New Marston was a momentous event: for all those who live and worship in Marston (Old and New) a very welcome arrival.

The history of the small chapel in Ferry Road is, however, much more interesting than the account published in The Oxford Times (October 14): it was consecrated in 1911 as a chapel of ease of St Nicholas, Old Marston and successor to two converted cottages on Marston Road which had since 1888 served the needs of the then new inhabitants of what is now New Marston.

In 1955, the church of St Michael and All Angels, ‘built’ by the extraordinary Dr Konstantin Hope (formerly Hopf, 1911-1971), was consecrated as a chapel of ease of St Andrew’s, Old Headington, and in 1963 became New Marston’s C of E parish church, with Dr Hope the first incumbent.

Meanwhile, the little chapel in Ferry Road was used by Dr Hope for church socials; in 1972, a year after Dr Hope’s death, aged only 60, it fell silent.

A distinguished theologian, a pre-war Confessing Lutheran priest and a courageous anti-Nazi, in mid-June 1937 Konstantin Hopf was imprisoned for ‘improper use of the pulpit’; after six months’ pre-trial imprisonment and subsequent house arrest, Hopf managed to escape to Switzerland where one of his cousins had been president (1927; 1931) and there married his Estonian-born wife, Hilde.

The couple moved to England in 1938. Dr Hope’s 23 years at St Michael’s was memorable for a host of reasons far too numerous to recount here, with for me memories of my late mother and the philosopher Professor Henry Price on Dr Hope’s always lively P.C.C. still vivid, as were the walks I was lucky to take with Dr Hope and our friend and neighbour, the social anthropologist Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, whose wife, Ioma, is remembered in the St Michael’s garden of remembrance.

Bruce Ross-Smith Oxford