History Of The Church

'The Church by the Arch'

Abbey United Reformed Church is a well-known landmark in the centre of Romsey with its flint walls and arch and is known to many as 'the Church by the Arch'. As you enter the church, the most noticeable feature is a set of vast, decorated organ pipes reaching up to a lofty roof. Below them is a stone pulpit and below that a dais with the Communion table. Those three items neatly illustrate the priorities for the Victorian Congregationalists who built the church in 1888. Its castellated brick and flint structure, with three staircase towers, is moated on two sides by a tributary of the River Test, and bordered on the other sides by a road called 'The Abbey' (hence the name of the Church) and by the solid 1928 Manse and 1858 Abbey Hall.

Earlier roots

The church stands on the site of an earlier chapel (1804). Nearby a Meeting House (circa 1708), with a tiny burial ground, had served the congregation of Independent Dissenters. Today, only the consecrated ground remains from that earlier building, as a quiet corner near to Romsey's busy Market Place. Earlier still the gathered church met in private homes licensed for worship. Even that freedom was denied the first members of the church, a small group set up in 1662 by Revd Thomas Warren, one of many Church of England ministers who dissented from the Act of Uniformity.

Through war and peace

Through its history, the focus of the Church Meeting (where all major decisions about the life of the church are made by its members) has often followed the historical concerns of the times. The church raised money for Home and Foreign Missions, railed against the Balfour Education Act of 1902 and anguished over the scourge of diphtheria, which closed the Sunday School for a time in 1906. During the First World War, the Hall was used as a Recreation Centre for the troops and in the Second it served as a health centre and British Restaurant. A memorial window in the church is a moving reminder of the terrible carnage of war, remembering forty young men associated with the Sunday School who died in the First World War.

Changing times

The growth of four village churches, of which one remains at Braishfield, has kept a succession of ministers busy over the years. Youth groups, Ladies Societies and cycling clubs have waxed and waned; in their place Pilots (for children and young people), women's groups and discussion meetings have grown. An Ideal Homes Exhibition was held in the hall in the early 1950s, a float was entered in the Festival of Britain carnival and for the Church Centenary of 1988, and the Church took a full part in the more recent Millennium celebrations. In 1972 the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches in England and Wales united to form the United Reformed Church and the Romsey Church Meeting agreed unanimously to enter the union. Relationships with the other churches in the town have deepened over the years and the church is a member of the Association of Romsey Churches. Its nearest church neighbour is Romsey Abbey and it is within that great Norman building that the founder of our congregation, Thomas Warren, is buried, with an inscription that includes the words: '…t'was Christ he preached, loved, lived.'

Discovering more

A full history of the church, called 'The Church by the Arch' by Ian Stirling is available from the church, priced £2. The majority of the Church Archives are now deposited at the Winchester Record Office and are being accessed during 2002: www.hants.gov.uk/record-office/index.html. The Church Archivist Mrs Jennifer Prestage is happy to deal with individual enquiries.

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