A HISTORY OF DORSET 



Sixteen years ago (continues the bishop) out of the 556 churches and chapels in the 

 diocese there were 2 sermons on Sunday in only 143. There are now 2 sermons or 

 lectures in 426, that is to say 214 out of the 298 churches and chapels in Dorset. Of the 

 84 churches and chapels in Dorset where there are not 2 services and 2 sermons the 

 account is as follows : in 16 parishes where there are 2 churches there is only I service and 

 I sermon, in 33 parishes where there is one church there is one sermon, and in 24 only 

 one service. In 35 parishes held in plurality there is but one sermon, and in 33 parishes 

 similarly circumstanced one service.^^' 



Bishop Kerr Hamilton, 1854-69, threw himself strenuously into the 

 work of church building and restoration. The number of churches con- 

 secrated during his episcopate amounted to 84, of those restored, to 104.*" 

 Under his successor Bishop Moberly, 1869—85, the number of churches 

 restored in the diocese reached a figure of 160.^" The nineteenth century 

 was prolific in church building ; to take the largest town in Dorset, Wey- 

 mouth, no less than five churches have been built within the borough since 

 its commencement : St. Mary's church, the foundation stone of which was 

 laid in 1 8 1 5 by command of Princess Charlotte of Wales ; Holy Trinity, 

 erected 1836 ; St. John's, 1854 ; Christchurch, built in 1874 as a chapel of 

 ease to the parish of St. Mary ; St. Paul's of Westham, formerly within 

 the parish of Wyke Regis but formed in 1902 into an ecclesiastical parish 

 under the name of St. Paul's Weymouth, was opened in 1896.'°* 



In Dorset, as elsewhere, the duty that confronts the Church is not only 

 to carry on the work and organization so well begun but to grapple with 

 the difficulties presented by the different circumstances that have arisen 

 since the earlier part of the last century. That this is well understood may 

 be seen from the objects and purposes of the Queen Victoria Clergy Fund, 

 to which the Salisbury Diocesan Board has been affiliated since its incorpora- 

 tion in 1897, which aims at raising the value of poor benefices, with popula- 

 tions of not less than 150, to an income of _^200 per annum, while a move- 

 ment has been set on foot in the diocese for the union of small benefices and 

 the re-arrangement of neighbouring parishes enabling them to be worked by 

 one incumbent.'*^" In this manner it is hoped to meet the difficulties of the 

 present agricultural decline, the diminishing number of candidates who offer 

 themselves for ordination, and to ensure the fulfilment of the Apostolic injunc- 

 tion that they which 'preach the Gospel ' shall also 'live of the Gospel.' 



'^' Charges to the C/ergy of Diocese of Salisbury at his primary visitation, 14, 15. The bishop in 1842 in 

 his charge spoke of an improvement in the observance of Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday, ' of late almost 

 universally neglected ; ' but by the returns made in 1854 Ash Wednesday was still disregarded in 1 1 2 churches 

 and chapels in Dorset, and in 133 the Feast of our Lord's Ascension was still not kept. Ibid. 15. As 

 regards the practice of morning and evening service daily, Bishop Hamilton, at least in later years, took 

 occasion to uphold their being said in prii'ate if not in public according to the directions of the Prayer Book. 

 H. P. Liddon, Walter Kerr Hamilton, Bp. of Salisbury : A Sketch, 57. In 185 S there were twenty-six churches 

 in the whole diocese where daily services were held, in 1861 there were thirty-nine. 



^'^ Ibid. App. 126. 



'*' Though some smaller works may be included in this list. John Wordsworth, Bp. of Salisbury, Four 

 addresses to clergy and churchwardens of diocese of Salisbury at his primary visitation. 



"' Handbook for Church Congress at JVeymouth, 1905 ; Rev. S. Lambert, Notes on Ch. of JVeymouth, 75-81. 



"' Report of the Board to the Diocesan Synod, Salisbury Diocesan Gazette, April, 1906, 67. 



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