William Kelly commented upon the construction of All Saints Church, in a lecture on Job, in 1903. The church had been built by encroachment upon the common land.

"Job describes these anomalies that are going on now. He says, "Some remove the landmarks." That is not at all an uncommon thing. We have the evidence of it all round about us in London now. There are people that have encroached upon - taken the common land of this very Blackheath. There you see in various parts of it where people somehow or other have encroached; they have laid hold upon what does not belong to them. But it has gone on so long that the law cannot touch them. There they are in possession; and we know that is a great thing in the eyes of lawyers although it is quite contrary to law in itself, but still they cannot touch them. And there are all these anomalies constantly going on - even in the face of all the censure of the law; here we have it. If we were in Cornwall or in the south of Ireland nobody would be astonished; there are plenty of anomalies there; but here you have it in London before your eyes."