The guide - our history through time

draft page - photos to be added, and a little tidying done

(other pages in the history section also yet to be written)

The most fascinating thing about a Parish Church is that it contains within its walls a complete record of an area’s history. It is rather like a giant tape recorder which has been running for centuries. The idea of this page is not to provide a complete guide to Gillingham Parish Church but to take the visitor on a virtual tour with a number of stopping places. At each of these an object from the past will help to unlock the history of those times.

1. Anglo-Saxon Cross shaft 800-900

This shaft, with its complicated interlaced pattern, was embedded in the wall of the Old Vicarage (now Rawson Court). It has been removed to the church for safe-keeping. It must have been part of a standing cross used either to mark a grave or as the centre of a sort of open air preaching spot. It was in use at the time when King Alfred was struggling against the Viking invasions. Up the hill at Shaftesbury he had founded his famous nunnery. Gillingham at this time was a small village which had grown from the original “ham” or homestead cleared from the forest by the Saxon named “Gylda”. The village would have been still enclosed in woods in which wolves and wild boar lived.

2. The Chancel 1270-1370

The five great pointed windows, with their trefoil heads (restored in 1990), which stand on the south side of the chancel show that it was built in the Decorated Gothic style popular in the 14th Century. Only the priests were allowed into this part of the church. They had their own door which can still be seen on the south side below the third window. While the creed and Gloria were being sung the priest and his assistants sat in the three seats (sedilia), which still remain on the south wall.

When the mass had ended the vessels used for the service were carefully rinsed in the piscine, a small shelf with a bowl, located to the east of the sedilia. The ritual of the mass depended on colour, sound and drama and it is necessary to imagine the smell of incense, the sound of the tinkling bells, which marked the stages in the ceremony, and the colourful vestments of the priests. The service was, of course, conduced in Latin so it was essential that the events of the church year should be celebrated with sufficient drama for the ordinary villagers to understand the story. For example, to illustrate the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection, an image of Christ was placed low down in an “Easter Sepulchre” on the evening of Good Friday and retained there until Easter Morning. On the north wall of the chancel, only two feet above the floor, can be seen the archway of Gillingham’s Easter Sepulchre. The ordinary people watched these ceremonies from the nave of the church. But not today’s nave.

The chancel was added to a much older building dating back to Norman or perhaps even Saxon times. All traces of this building were lost when it was pulled down in 1838. Henry Deane, the Vicar at the time of the restoration, wrote that the old nave was separated from the aisles by “three heavy Saxon or Norman arches”. It seems probable that the roof of the new chancel was built with wood from the royal forest of Gillingham. At the end of the present Kingscourt Road King John and his son Henry III had built and embellished a moated Manor House. Surrounded by the fence and the ditch of the royal deer park, this was where Henry III often came to stay. It was probably during the time of this kind or his Plantagenet sons and grandsons, Edward I and II, that the chancel of Gillingham was added to its narrow Saxon or Norman nave.

3. The Bench Ends and Font 1400-1500

On either side of the central aisle are bench ends, which must have been part of the 15th century church. They are carved in the Perpendicular Gothic style. Look for the poppy heads and the carved face of a scold with a nail driven through her tongue. At the far west end of the church, under the tower, lies the font, also in Perpendicular Gothic style. The period when the bench ends and the font were added to the church was the time of the Hundred Years War with France and the endless “Wars of the Roses” between the rival claimants to the throne. By now the Royal Manor House on the outskirts of Gillingham was in decay but the royal forest and park, much depleted by “assarts”, royal licences to enclose areas of the forest for farming, was still in existence though no longer visited much by royalty.

4. The Rood Screen and St. Catherine’s Chapel 1547-1553

At the east end of the north aisle stands a richly carved screen. Like the bench ends and the font it is carved in the perpendicular Gothic style. In 1547 when the young Edward VI became King it stood between the nave and chancel and was known as a rood screen. Its purpose was to separate the ordinary congregation in the nave from the mysteries of the mass being carried out by the priests in the chancel. On top of it was a large crucifix or rood.

In St. Catherine’s Chapel, the area behind the screen in its current position, stood a special altar. Here, since its foundation in 1331, generations of priests had said mass for the souls of the dead. The souls they prayed for came from the family that had founded the chantry chapel. The priests who said these masses for the dead were paid from the income from land in the Gillingham and Milton area bequeathed for this purpose. By the end of Edward VI’s reign in 1553 all of this had changed. England, which had renounced the supremacy of the Pope in Henry VIII’s time now made several more important religious changes.

The ordinary people were to participate fully in the new English service. There was no longer any need for a rood screen to cut them off from the chancel so it was taken down. Prayers for the souls of the dead was now ridiculed. So the chantry chapel was closed down, Gillingham’s last chantry priest, Galfryd Gill, was pensioned off at £5 per annum and the lands belonging to the St. Catherine’s chantry chapel and the chapel itself has become a choir vestry.

5. The Jessop Tomb 1579-1625

Just inside the chapel on the north wall lies a large altar tomb. The figure in front was the Rev. John Jessop, fellow of All Souls’ College, Oxford and Vicar of Gillingham from 1579-1625. Behind him lies Dr Thomas Jessop his elder brother and Doctor of Medicine and fellow of Merton College, Oxford. According to the Gillingham parish registers, (which date back to 1559 - the first year of Queen Elizabeth I's reign), the two brothers worked well together. A certain Elizabeth Trenchard seems to have been unwilling to obey the usual custom of abstaining from meat at Lent. Dr Thomas obligingly diagnosed that she was too sick to eat fish and his reverend brother issued her with a licence to eat meat over the Lenten period!

John Jessop must have used the fine chalice, still in the parish church collection (nb this, like our other "valuables" is not kept on church property!) and dated 1574, at the Eucharists he celebrated. (His time as Vicar spanned the war with Spain and the Spanish Armada.) He outlived his brother and died just before King James I in February 1625. It was in his time as vicar that the royal coat of arms was placed in the church. James I wished to emphasise that he fully supported the Church of England against the criticisms of the Puritans. The coat of arms was put into the church in 1618 and can now be seen above the screen at the entrance to St. Catherine’s Chapel.

6. The Memorial to Edward Davenant, 1625-1679

Stand under the west tower arch. High above the arch can be seen a tablet with a long Latin inscription. This commemorates the Rev. Edward Davenant, Vicar of Gillingham from 1625. It was his misfortune to hold this post during the Civil War in which Charles I was ultimately tried and executed. He was far from popular with the Puritan Roundheads who fought against the King. They plundered his house, seized his library, destroyed the church organ and deprived him of his position as Vicar of Gillingham. However, after the death of Oliver Cromwell, Charles II was restored as King of England and the Rev. Davenant was soon given back his post.

7. The Dirdoe and Read Monuments, 1724-1798

At the eastern end of the north wall of St. Catherine’s chapel stands an 18-foot high marble memorial. The central figure is Frances Dirdoe and on either side of her stand her sisters Rebecca and Rachel. Their father, Henry Dirdoe, lived in the Mansion House at Milton. All his five sons died before him and so his estate was divided between his ten daughters, including Frances. Henry’s memorial can be seen on the north wall of the chancel. When Frances died she left a fine communion flagon to the parish church.

8. The Nave 1838-1839

Stand at the junction of the chancel and the nave and look westwards. Almost all of the church in this direction was a replacement for the older nave and aisles. The Vicar at that time, 1838, was Henry Deane and it was at this request that the old nave was rebuilt in its present form. The architect’s name was Walker; he also designed St. Rumbold’s in Shaftesbury. Besides the nave, aisles, galleries over them and two porches were installed. The blocked up entrances to the galleries can still be seen over the two porches. Henry Deane was still Vicar of Gillingham in 1859 when the railway arrived and turned Gillingham into a thriving industrial town. When he died in 1882 his grateful parishioners paid for a new lectern and pulpit in commemoration of this services to Gillingham. The pulpit is still used regularly today although a lectern that is more easily moved is used most of the time rather than the fine eagle.

Look down to the tower arch at the west end of the church. This was the work of C E Ponting, who entirely remodelled both the exterior and the interior of the tower in 1908-9, and a glance at the restored roof reveals the splendid decorated bosses.

9. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd - 1921

Reredos, High Altar - 1925

The prosperity of the Victorian and Edwardian eras was brought to a devastating halt by the Great War of 1914-18. The Chapel of the Good Shepherd was given by Mr and Mrs Carlton Cross in memory of their son who was killed in France while carrying in some of the wounded men from his regiment. W D Caroe, the architect who designed the chapel, went on to create many other fine works, including the east end of the Lady Chapel in Sherborne Abbey.

Look through windows in the north wall of the chapel into the chancel. The reredos beneath the east window is another reminder of the tragedy of the Great War. It was given in 1925 by Mr and Mrs Matthews of Wyke House in memory of two of their sons who were both killed in the war. Further examples of the work of Nathaniel Hitch (1846-1938), the sculptor responsible for the reredos, may be seen in Westminster Abbey and Truro and Bristol Cathedrals.

Memorials to those who died in the Great War can be seen hanging above the Jacobean communion table in St. Catherine’s Chapel. The Book of Remembrance nearby records all those who served in the two World Wars and also those who died.

10. Bishop’s Pastoral Staff - 1927

The pastoral staff in the case at the entrance to the chapel belonged to Bishop Abbott who was Bishop of Sherborne 1925-1927. He had previously been Vicar of Gillingham (1916-1925).
The stained glass window over the archway of the chapel was placed there in his memory.

11. Oak Plaque, Entrance to the Chapel of the Good Shepherd - 1946

An oak plaque just to the north of the entrance to the Chapel of the Good Shepherd reminds us that the “War to end all Wars” produced another major war in just over 20 years. The plaque explains that the electric lighting in the church was installed as a thanks offering for the termination of the Second World War.

The additional lighting in the nave was installed in 1987 in memory of Archdeacon E L Seager who was Vicar of Gillingham from 1946-1979.

12. Rood Figure

High above the chancel arch is the rood figure which was executed in the workshops at Gillingham School and presented to the church in 1966.

This was just one of the latest events recorded on that giant tape recorder, the Parish Church of Gillingham when the above guide was written - and this section is to be completed with more recent additions.