History and archives

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to his name;
worship the Lord in the splendour of holiness. (Psalm 29:2)

page to be written, but ...

The guide (our history through time) has been written and see the menu on the right to find other pages as they are added.

"The past in the present" - a new church guide

Can you find a thousand years of continuous worship inside St Mary’s church? Where are the oldest and the most recent features to be found?
A new guide booklet to looking around the church now helps you to do this.

The church today is largely the creation of Henry Deane, vicar from 1832 to 1882. He was an energetic, visionary figure who rebuilt the earlier medieval church so that everybody could be properly seated and the congregation could see more of what was going on in the service. The galleries he built might be long gone, but the pulpit and eagle lectern are still there to remind us of his work. His zeal extended to rebuilding the other churches in the parish at West Stour, East Stour, Motcombe, and Milton. He lived at a time when vicars were wealthy enough to contribute substantial sums to rebuilding from their own pockets!

Before his time the church, especially the nave, was a lot smaller. The tower was twenty feet closer to the chancel than it is now. At that time there was no Good Shepherd Chapel; this wasn’t added until the 1920s.

Earlier centuries produced some long-serving vicars. Edward Davenant and John Jesop notched up a whole century between them from 1579 to 1679. Do you know where their memorials can be found? There are some twenty plaques and tablets to be seen around the church, some of them in high positions and not easily readable. One cannot fail to be moved by the inscription on the huge, beautiful memorial to Frances Dirdoe (18 feet high), a stark reminder of the unpredictability of life in earlier centuries.

Around ten centuries separate the rood figure over the chancel, produced at Gillingham School in 1966, from the fragment of Anglo-Saxon stone on the wall at the end of the south aisle. With the help of the new guide book and a little time spent walking round, you might be able to fill in more of the centuries for yourself.

There will also be a tour around the church after coffee on Sunday 13^th April. Pick up a copy of the booklet and come along. Looking forward to seeing you there!

John Porter

the new material from the guide will be added to this history section of the website in time