Nativity play
Bangay and her twin sister moved to Chesham, Buckinghamshire in 1910, and Bessie started to teach Sunday school at St George's Church, Tyler's Hill, Ley Hill. In 1917, during a wartime shortage of male church leaders, she was licensed by the Bishop of Oxford, as one of 22 women who began the Diocesan Order of Women's Messengers, female lay readers in the Church of England. She led St George's Church during the war, and afterwards. She took charge of the Sunday school when it resumed in 1919, and set up a ladies' cricket team, as well as groups for girls, young wives, mothers, and senior citizens. She was also in charge of the church's annual Nativity play. She also began a branch congregation at a pub in nearby Lye Green in the 1930s, and continued to run the "pub church" until 1963.