In common with many other public buildings the church lost its iron railings for the war effort.  Despite all this the work of the church went on; the Sunday School won the Silver Shield for the highest Scripture Examination results and the Sunday School teachers were also the leaders in their group.  In 1943 Mr. Duffy was elected President of the Herts Baptist Association and in 1944 General Sir William Dobbie, Commander of Malta during the seige of the George Cross island, preached at the Church Anniversary Services, which were packed out.

Now after ten years Mr. Duffy was led to accept a call to the church at Blockley, a place which our young people from Marshalswick were to visit years later in 1976 on one of the holiday camps.

The Rev. W.E.Booth Taylor began his ministry in September 1946.  It was a difficult time with many restrictions still in force, but there was a feeling of the need to rebuild both in a material sense and in a spiritual way.  As part of this rebuilding, links were made with German prisoners of war who were housed in the grounds of Gorhambury.  A number came regularly to the Tabernacle for Sunday services to share in the worship.  Mr. Taylor’s sermon was, sentence by sentence, translated into German by their own padre Pastor Schliebtz.

A number of new ventures were tried at this time including the starting of a monthly ‘Messenger’ to help maintain contact and to help to spread the ‘Good News’ to the locality.  New links with the Dagnall .St. church were made through Mr. Taylor and Mr. Robertson the Dagnall St. minister exchanging pulpits from time to time. This enabled the two churches to combine to put on the Baptist Missionary Society’s Exhibition and helped to generate a number of individual friendships which lasted through many years.

1950 brought a challenge which drew the churches even closer.  St. Albans was expanding, new housing estates were being developed, and the first of these was at Cottonmill.  It was soon evident that there was a need to provide local facilities for children to attend Sunday School.  In August 1950 a number of teachers from both churches commenced an open-air school at Cottonmill.  They seem to have been fortunate with the weather at first but in a short time they were given the use of a Nissen hut as temporary cover in the winter months until they were able to make use of a local school building.  After many meetings and much hard work, particularly by Mr. Tolcher the Tabernacle secretary at this time, a building was opened by Mr. H. Janes in March 1953.  Mr Janes was head of a large Luton based building company who were to be responsible for the building of the Marshalswick church 15 years later.

The story of the next few years of Tabernacle is typical of many a small dedicated chuch.  Services were maintained each Sunday and the members sought to make contact with the people around them.  There was a strong youth group who in 1953, perhaps stimulated by the Queens Coronation, wrote and produced a filmstrip.  This was based on the martyrdom of St. Alban written from the point of view of the centurion who carried out the execution.  It involved a number of scenes, one of them being photographed on the steps of Gorhambury.  It was produced in play form with the cast reading their scripts as the pictures were shown on the screen.  It was presented at Tabernacle in the November and then at a number of youth and church meetings around the area.

In 1954 there was a major fire which destroyed Slades Hat factory opposite the Tabernacle on the corner of Bricket Road.  The front of the church suffered superficial damage which was redecorated at the expense of the Insurance Company.  The site remained derelict until 1978 although two attempts were made to purchase it with a view to building a new church in exchange for the Tabernacle site which was coveted by the Cooperative Society for an extension to their own site next door.