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A Short History of Holy Rood Church Coombe Keynes
Based on an article by Christopher Scoble:
“Coombe Keynes Church: an object lesson in Victorian self help”.
Dorset: the County Magazine, No. 95, [c. 1981], pp. 4-19
Origins of the Parish
The parish of Coombe Keynes covers a little over 2,000 acres and is at the western rim of the Purbeck Hills. The village takes its name from the coombe (or valley) in which it stands and the Keynes family who were lords of the manor from the 12th to the 14th centuries. They were descendants of Ralph de Caineto who came to England with William the Conqueror.
In the Doomsday Book of 1086 the settlement was recorded as belonging to Walter de Clarevile, and was described in the following terms:
The same (Walter) holds Caime. Two thegns held it in the time of King Edward and it paid geld for 3 hides. There is land for 3 ploughs. In demesne there is 1 plough and 2 serfs and 2 villeins and 1 bordar with 1½ plough. There (are) 2 acres of meadow and 2 furlongs of pasture in length and width. It was and is worth 60 shillings.
The manor was held by the Keynes family until, with the death of John de Keynes in 1375, the male line died out. Ownership of the manor passed from the Keynes, through the Newburgh family, eventually to James, Earl of Suffolk who sold it to Humphrey Weld in 1641. It remained in the Weld family, apart from a period of sequestration, until the process of selling off the two farmhouses, farm buildings and cottages began in 1975.
In 1662, according to Hearth Tax returns, the population of the parish was in the region of 170. However, the population is believed to have been higher before the Black Death, which entered the county through Melcome Regis (now Weymouth). In 1801 the population was 93 and rose to 163 in 1861. By 1971 it had fallen to 78 and is now much less.
The major industry was agriculture, with two farms, East Farm and West Farm situated in the centre of the village and the brickyard, which worked the Reading beds on the western edge of the village, which from the middle of the 19th century and into the 20th produced a steady flow of bricks and tiles.
The Church Building
Coombe Keynes Church was dedicated to the Holy Rood, like the church in Wool. It has been suggested that many of the churches with that dedication originally possessed part of the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified. It is probable that there was a church on this site in the Saxon period. However, the earliest definite mention occurs in the Assize Rolls in 1280.
As a county, Dorset is the proud inheritor of 136 medieval bells. There is a long-standing tradition that, following the dissolution of the monasteries, three of the bells from Bindon Abbey came to Coombe Keynes. However, only one of the bells belonging to the church at its redundancy is of that age.
Until 1844 Coombe Keynes and Wool comprised one vicarage, with the mother church being Coombe Keynes. This caused numerous disputes between the parishioners of the two communities.
In 1844 the chapelry of Wool was separated from Coombe Keynes so the two churches were independent of each other until the Coombe Keynes church was declared redundant in 1974.
The church’s finest treasure was the Coombe Keynes chalice. Its special value can be gauged from the fact that less than 100 medieval chalices are known to exist in England today. The chalice dates from about 1500 and is of silver, parcel gilt. It was in everyday use in the parish up until the 1920s. A silver replica was made in 1931 to be kept by the V&A Museum in London and the original is now on permanent display in the Dorchester County Museum.
Read more about the Chalice here.
By the mid-nineteenth century the Coombe Keynes church was in a state of disrepair, with the three bells lying in the earth floor of the South aisle. In 1849 Sir Stephen Glynne, brother-in-law of William Gladstone (later Prime Minister) visited Coombe Keynes and described the church:
A small church comprising a nave with south aisle, chancel, western tower and north porch. The arcade between the nave and aisle has three pointed arches, with continued mouldings down square piers which have no capitals, excepting the western arch which rises from a shaft set against the pier. The chancel arch is low and semicircular on imposts. In the aisle (which has a separate tiled roof) are two lancets and two at its east end. The chancel has two lancets on the south – the south-western of which is a lynchscope – and there are two on the north. The east window is square-headed of three lights and late. Some other bad windows have been introduced. The walls are of flint and stone. The south aisle damp from the accumulation of earth and stone. The font a circular cup upon a cylinder. The tower low without buttresses, having a pointed roof; on its west side a long lancet and lancet belfry window. The roofs are chiefly of stone flags.
In the chancel was the flat gravestone of Samuel Serrell who married into the Salter family in 1688, and below it, at the east end of the nave, the stone of Jane, his wife (the Salter family resided here from the early fifteenth century until about 1700). At the lower end of the south aisle were three more gravestones: those of James Allner, Mary Allner and James Bewnel.
Nineteenth Century Restoration
The moving force for restoration of the church was the Rev. Nathaniel Bond of Creech Grange, Rector of Steeple and Tyneham and the Rural Dean. The Diocesan Architect wrote on 7 August 1858:
I have never seen a sadder case than this of ecclesiastical dilapidation and difficulty. A portion of the church is a complete ruin and the rest little better…
He proposed a comprehensive plan of restoration, which was so costly that the alternative plan to demolish the whole structure was proposed to Joseph Weld by Nathaniel Bond. However, Weld replied that the tower at the east should be preserved and this was accepted by Bond. The preparation of detailed plans was put in the hands of the Dorchester architect, John Hicks, to whom Thomas Hardy was the senior pupil from the spring of 1860. The money for the restoration was raised:
£100 Church rate, half in 1860 and half in 1861 contributed by 8 ratepayers
£100 Grants from Incorporated Church Building Societies
£427 Voluntary subscriptions from clergy and gentry in the area
£35 Further voluntary subscriptions
£662
The floors of the nave, tower, porch and chancel were laid with Purbeck paving, together with some of the old paving and the existing flat tombstones. The floor of the sacrarium was laid with red black and buff tiles from the Poole Potteries. A specially made reading desk and communion table were installed, and a new pulpit of Bath stone was erected in the south-east corner of the nave.
The last marriage in the old church was solemnised on 17 June 1858 between Stephen Penny, a labourer from East Lulworth, and Mary Lucas of Coombe Keynes. However the last recorded baptism appears to have occurred as late as 1861, when the curate baptised John, the son of Joseph Wilcox, a shepherd from the village. It is of course possible that this baptism took place somewhere else (in Wool church, for example), but if it did indeed take place in the the old church, it would indicate that the major work was all completed in the spring and summer of 1861, in the space of little over five months. For that period at least, the villagers would have had to walk to Wool or East Lulworth for their Sunday Service.
The vicar, Frank Newington, himself made the tiny glass windows on either side of the chancel; they were painted on the diaphene principle, one with figures on a blue background representing the four evangelists, together with St Peter, St Paul and John the Baptist. Sadly these intriguing designs for a church window are now lost for all time; the windows were smashed by vandals in 1975, and their remnants are in the possession of the vicar of Wool.
Saturday 24 August 1861 was a great day in the history of Coombe – a unique occasion on which dignitaries from all over Dorset came to pay their respects to the church-building zeal of this tiny village. One witness of the events on that day was the young Thomas Hardy, then 21.
After a long service the minds of all turned to more temporal matters. The village and its guests made their way down Church Lane to the great barn behind East Coombe Farm, decorated with evergreens for the occasion, for a lunch provided by the landlord of the Black Bear at Wool. At the sight of all the food, Thomas Hardy waxes lyrical. It was:
One of the most sumptuous luncheons to which we have sat down for some time, embracing, as it did, a profusion of the choicest delicacies put on the tables in the most artistic and elegant style.
Thus the new church was brought into use. The first baptism there was that of Samuel, the son of Robert and Mary Sansome of Coombe Keynes, which took place on 19 January 1862. The first marriage was celebrated on Christmas Eve that year between William Billett of East Burton and Ann Parker of Coombe Keynes.
In spite of the complete restoration, problems were still encountered with the fabric. Early last century, the roof fell into decay and was restored by means of funds raised by soldiers of the 1st Canadian Tank Battalion stationed at Bovington in the First World War, an action which the plaque on the north wall of the nave commemorates.
Pevsner’s Guide to the Buildings of Dorset (1951) comments:
HOLY ROOD. 1860-61 by Hicks, except for the short west tower which is Early English (compare the clasping buttresses and the lancet bell-openings), the nave west walls, which must be older than the tower (compare the lancet window, perhaps original Norman), and the chancel arch, which is again Early English (though over-restored), –
PLATE. Chalice of around 1500, parcel-gilt, hexagonal foot and stem and knob with angel heads, on the foot of the crucifixion; Paten on foot, 1726.
Modern Times
By the early 1970s, the old agricultural population of the village had dwindled and the average attendance at Sunday services was no more than half-a-dozen or so. A move was made by the Salisbury authorities to close the church down and without any local protest the church was declared redundant on 14 January 1974. The last marriage in the church was that between Anthony Wilkinson and Rosalind Whittle on 21 October 1967; the last to be baptised was Alexander, the son of Ian and Felicity Hedger, on 4 February 1973.
In the years after 1974, various attempts were made to devise a scheme for the church to be handed over for the use of the village. In 1978, a committee was formed from among the villagers to raise funds and to pursue negotiations with the Salisbury authorities for the purchase of the building. In 1980, the Coombe Keynes Trust was established under the presidency of Sir Joseph Weld, whose great grandfather had done so much to save what was left of the old church a century before. The general object of the Trust is:
To promote the restoration and permanent preservation for the public of the Church of the Holy Rood at Coombe Keynes in the County of Dorset as a building of historical and architectural interest which should be retained for the education of the present and future generations.
Finally in 1981, the long years of consultation and negotiation came to an end and the church was handed over to the Trust for a nominal sum, and the latter undertook responsibility for the upkeep of the fabric.
More information can be found on the Trust section of the website.
WIP – link back to trust. Insert pictures. Window in Wool? New pics of CK Chalice. Pic of Canadian servicemen plaque