Preface
This text was originally transcribed from a guide book to the church written circa 1980. Since then, much has changed in and around the church. If you would like to help in updating this history of our church, possibly publishing a new version of the guide book as well, then please contact me, William Noad.
Introduction
“Crookham?” people ask when you say the name. “Do you mean Church Crookham?” Or perhaps they think you are speaking of Crookham Village. In fact Crookham is an ecclesiastical parish that includes those two localities as well as all the rest of the southern part of the town of Fleet. It has a population approaching 17,000. Much of the development that has brought in that number of people has taken place since the Second World War. A hundred and fifty years ago there were few houses, and locals had to walk as much as three miles to their parish church at Crondall.
The name Crookham is an ancient one. A thousand years ago Saxon England was divided into “hundreds,” each an area from which one hundred men-at-arms could be raised. Crookham formed a Tithing—one tenth part—of the Hundred of Crondall, part of the family possessions of King Alfred the Great.
Under the Normans, Crondall became a Parish in the Shire or County of Southampton, now known as Hampshire. For centuries there was little change. Crookham stretched from Bowling Alley, barely a mile from Crondall Church, across the barren Crookham Common, where the centre of Fleet now stands, to Fleet Mill, on the stream that drains Fleet Pond. There was only one settlement of any size, Crookham Street, now known as Crookham Village, where a track from Crondall met the road from Odiham to Yateley. Ewshot was a smaller, more productive Tithing to the east, also in Crondall parish.
Following an 1834 Act of Parliament several square miles of land were enclosed into small-holdings. By 1839 Crookham and Ewshot together could count twelve hundred inhabitants. Edmund Yalden White cared for the people of the whole parish as curate to the absentee Vicar of Crondall. He was worried by the hardship caused to old inhabitants through the enclosure of their commons, and by the lack of pastoral care for the large number of newcomers. A plan to build a new church was launched, with the support of Charles Lefroy, whose family had inherited Itchel Manor at Crondall in 1818, and who was influenced by Charles Dyson, Rector of Dogmersfield and a friend of John Keble.
Keble (1792–1866) was an Oxford don, Fellow of Oriel College and Professor of Poetry in the University. In 1833 he preached a sermon to the Judges who came to hold Assizes at Oxford. He condemned as “national apostasy” the action of the government of the day in taking over some church property for secular purposes. That sermon was published as the first in a series of “Tracts for the Times.” They were written mainly by Keble and his friends Edward Bouverie Pusey, a professor at Christ Church, Oxford, and John Henry Newman, who was then Vicar of the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, where Keble's assize sermon had been preached. The “Tractarians,” so-called after their Tracts, began the Oxford Movement, to recall the Church of England to what they considered to be its true purposes. Rather than just giving moral support to the government—and changing the direction of that support every time a different political party took power—the church was to proclaim the catholic faith of Christendom to the people of England, and strengthen its own life as the Church of Christ. In worship this led to a change from emphasis on teaching the moral values of the Bible. There was a return to Eucharistic worship, the gathering of the redeemed people of God before his altar to commemorate the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on Calvary and to share sacramentally the eternal worship of the risen Lord in heaven.
In 1853, at the of his marriage, Keble left Oxford to become Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester and within a day's ride of his friend and former tutor, Charles Dyson, at Dogmersfield.
It is difficult to authenticate stories of Keble's involvement with the building of Christ Church Crookham. However, towards the end of his life he visited Crookham a number of times to stay with his friends of the Dyson family, who had moved here after Charles' death. It was he who had persuaded Keble to publish “The Christian Year” back in 1827. That set of verses on the Book of Common Prayer, expounding its calendar and observances, became a best-seller and a textbook of the Oxford Movement, promoting a revival of traditional Christian teaching and devotion in the Church of England. Some verses remain well-known as hymns, such as “Blest are the pure in heart,” and “New every morning is the love.” In the book's centenary year, 1927, the association of John Keble with Crookham Church was marked by placing in the pew he used to occupy on his visits a shrine in the form of a wooden case containing a copy of “The Christian Year.” The shrine is now mounted on the wall nearby.
Keble died in 1866; and by 1870 Keble College, Oxford had been founded in his memory. With a number of churches all over the world dedicated in his name, and a place in the Calendar of Saints in Alternative Service Book 1980, John Keble is revered at Crookham as our local saint. His festival on 29th March, the day he died, is kept with some solemnity in years when it is not overshadowed by Holy Week.
Crookham-cum-Ewshot
Parson White wanted the new church to remain under his care within the parish of Crondall. His diary (preserved at Selborne, for he was a relative of Gilbert White, the natural historian) tells of his riding over the hill to Farnham Castle where lived the Bishop (of Winchester: Guildford diocese was not formed until 1927), but in spite of his plea it was decided that the two Tithings were to be formed into a separate district, now called a parish, to be named Crookham-cum-Ewshot.
Land was bought for the new church, on Gally Hill, midway between Crookham Street and Ewshot Plain, although there were few houses nearby. A fund was raised by public subscription to erect “a decent ecclesiastical building, without much ornament;large enough to accommodate 400 persons.” The first stone was laid in March 1840. The church was consecrated by Henry Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, on 31st August 1841 and named Christ Church. Anthony Cottrell Lefroy, Charles's nephew, who until then had been curate to Dyson ay Dogmersfield, became the first curate of the new church and parish.
Daily services and twice-monthly Eucharist's were held at Crookham Church from the beginning, and were thought to be revolutionary. The surplice, worn in the pulpit, was considered a Popish innovation–Parson White preached in a black gown until his death in 1862. Grace Lefroy, Anthony's daughter, tells us that families did not sit together, but men were on the north side and women on the south, with boys beyond the pulpit and girls by the vestry door near the harmonium. She remembered the white smocks of the farmers, and the women's shawls and bonnets.
Soon a group of large family houses began to rise around the church, giving rise to the name “Church Crookham.” They were built mainly by friends of the Lefroy and Dyson families, attracted by the new style of worship and church life. Anthony Lefroy himself built the parsonage. Next he built a school, which was opened in 1843 and was conducted under the rules of “The National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church.” Other schools were opened in existing buildings, on Crookham Common (now Albert Street, Fleet) and at Ewshot. The original parish school, rebuilt around the turn of the century, still functions as a county-controlled infants school, and there are now seven county schools in the parish as well.
The Lefroys built the Wyvern Inn in 1854; the sign is taken from the Lefroy crest. In the same year, with a legacy from the Cottrell side of the family, parish almshouses were built; in 1987 these were replaced by the new flats administered by the same historic Trust and known as Cottrell Court.
As the population grew, daughter churches were built. All Saints, another Lefroy venture was begun in 1860. When the parish was divided to give All Saints a district of its own, the name chosen was “All Saints Fleet” because it included both Fleet Pond and the railway station that had been given the same name. From then on “Fleet” began to replace “Crookham” as the name of the locality. In 1873, in the time of George Powell, Anthony Lefroy's successor as curate, Saint Mary Ewshot was built; it was separated from Crookham-cum-Ewshot in 1885.
The Community
Back in the 1830s Parson White had been troubled by the activities of those whom he called Dissenters, today more politely known as Free Churches. In 1850 a dispute with the Crookham clergy over the burial of Nonconformists led to the establishment of the first permanent meeting place and a burial ground for Baptists, at Hope Chapel, Victoria Road, now in All Saints parish. There are now Methodist, Roman Catholic and Baptist churches in the parish, and happy relationships exit between all denominations. Both Roman Catholic and Anglican parishes in the town are divided by the Basingstoke Canal.
The canal, now two hundred years old, had little influence on the growth of the area, though some of the older houses are inns, which provided for the navigators (or “navvies”) who constructed the waterway. There is still little industry; with most of the population housed in less than a quarter of the area of the parish, much of Crookham remains delightfully rural. A small light industrial estate occupies a site which once was used for an enterprise unique in this country, the commercial production of tobacco. The fine Victorian house built for this farm is now a residential conference centre. There has been a military presence at Crookham since the time of the Crimean War. Now a battalion of Ghurkha soldiers is stationed in barracks which for many years housed the Depot of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
The Church Building
The land for Christ Church Crookham was bought cheaply. It formed part of The Gables farm, and was mortgaged to a Farnham solicitor. When Farmer Froud died in 1839 it had to be sold for £28 to pay the debt. However the building cost £2,422, a great deal for a parish where there were “so few resident gentry,” as the appeal brochure pointed out. The design was four-square and sturdy, with thick brick walls and well proportioned lancet windows. The cruciform plan afforded a chancel and north and south transepts of equal size, with a longer nave. Nave and transepts were filled with bench seating. All looked towards the crossing, where stood the pulpit and reading desk. The altar in the chancel was quite separate from the main area of the church, because Eucharistic worship was not in those days the usual Anglican way. The broad open proportions of the original church show their simplicity and strength when the eye is not caught by the more ornate chancel. The original appearance of the church is shown in a water-colour in the south transept, painted by Anne Lefroy, wife of the first parish priest. A portrait of Anthony Lefroy himself is in the north transept.
As the Oxford Movement made progress, church buildings were altered. Reading desk and pulpit were no longer to be as important as the altar. Taking their models from current continental practices and what was known of late mediaeval England, the Victorians constructed large chancels at the east end of churches to give expression to this principle. It happened at Crookham in 1877, when the Chancel and Children's Aisle were built. From this rebuilding date the stained glass of the east window and the small windows of what was the Children's Aisle, but is now the Lady Chapel. The latter show figures of the Christ Child and John the Baptist as a boy.
The pictures on the chancel walls are in a method of decoration called graffito. The date displayed is 1893, and the initials HS reveal the artist to be Heywodd Sumner. He was grandson of the bishop who consecrated Christ Church, and his mother Mary founded the Mothers' Union, now a world-wide organisation. Sumner himself was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. He practised many forms of art, and developed graffito into a pictorial medium which he used to decorate eleven churches. It is a laborious method, and Sumner carried out the whole process himself, working with a single assistant on large projects. First, the brick or stone of the wall was roughly plastered and left to dry hard. The design, previously prepared in the studio, was then marked on this surface. A second coat of plaster was applied in blocks of up to five different colour, as the design required, and again left to harden. The final, thin coat of un coloured plaster was put on in small sections, so that as it set the design could be cut out, revealing the bright blues and reds we still see today. Sumner set angels on north and east walls–proclaiming the resurrection, conquering the dragon, presenting the prayers of the saints in the smoke of incense–and to the south a Nativity scene, with Virgin and Child and shepherds arriving to pay homage.
Heywood Sumner returned to Crookham in 1900, this time to work in stained glass. He executed two windows at the west end of the church. They represent the angels of the Annunciation and the Resurrection, with texts quoted from the gospels: “Ave gratia plena” (Hail, full of grace!); and “Mulier quid ploras?” (Woman, why are you weeping?) respectively. Other stained glass is more conventional, but a curiosity to note is the use of portraits of the persons commemorated in the figures in some of the nave windows.
The inner west doors commemorate a more recent parishioner, General Dudley Johnson, VC, a hero of the First World War who was churchwarden of Crookham for twenty years (1949–1968), and in whose memory an annual prize is offered for competition by the children of Fleet. Among the families named on the memorial tablets, Wickham is especially prominent. Two brothers of that name were parish priests of Crookham successively for a period of fifty years: Gordon Boles Wickham from 1875 to 1883, and then until 192 Wilfrid Gordon Wickham, who was the first pastor to bear the title “Vicar,” bestowed in 1890. The latter lived in the parish until his death in 1931, and is remembered as he went about its streets in frock coat and shovel hat on a tricycle.
Pulpit and font match, and date from 1893. The church's original font now stands outside in the churchyard in an Easter garden, where it makes a link with the Easter baptismal liturgy.
Treasures
Some of Christ Church's treasures are older than the building itself. Mounted on the brass cross on the reredos is and ebony and ivory crucifix which is German work of the eighteenth century. A painting near the pulpit is dated 1825 and is a miniature copy of a sixteenth century original, at Magdalen College Oxford, of Christ bearing the cross. A picture o the head of Christ in the Lady Chapel is said to have been removed from a church in France at the time of the Revolution. That is not the only romantic story which it is difficult to substantiate. The Flass Madonna, also in the Lady Chapel, was made in Czechoslovakia, but it was presented to Crookham's parish priest by a refugee from the Nazis as he lay dying here with his friends who had rescued him? That priest certainly gave the Madonna to the church as a memorial to his wife, and himself carved the wooden niche in which she stands, and wrote a sonnet which hangs framed beside her. The Lady Chapel also has a Russian icon of the Virgin and Child brought back by a parishioner from his travels as a diplomat; and a mother-o'-pearl carved representation of Saint Pascal on the Tabernacle on the Altar. The extension to the Children's Aisle to house the Altar and so form the Lady Chapel was built in 1924, bringing the exterior of a large lancet window inside the church. The Lady Chapel screen with its angels and Madonna and Child was carved by George Absalom Parsons, a noted wood carver of the 1920s and 1930s who lived in Fleet.
Hidden Treasures
Some beautiful things used in worship cannot be displayed at other times. These include a number of pieces of silver. The church's collection began with a standing paten dated 1692. The mark it bears suggests that it was a gift from Dogmersfield church. Knife marks on it show that at some time the Eucharistic bread used to be cut rather than broken. To complete the set of silver required at the consecration of the church, a flagon was made, now used on festivals when there are many communicants, and a bell shaped chalice with a finely fluted stem. With the addition of a cover designed to repeat the pattern of the fluting, the latter is used today as a ciborium. A gift to mark to jubilee of the church in 1891 is known as the Badajos chalice, made as a copy of a Spanish piece looted by the Duke of Wellington's army after the Battle of Badajos in 1812. It is large and ornate, with much chasing and medallions moulded with scenes of the Passion. With it came the Dutch paten, so called because of an early nineteenth century Netherlands hall mark, but now believed to be of German origin and perhaps two centuries older.
Two banners hang in the chancel except during Lent. The parish banner, bearing a resurrection symbol, the Lamb and Flag, is reputed to have been made by women of the parish in the early years of the church. The story is that Anne Lefroy, who was undoubtedly a talented artist, gathered a working party in the huge drawing room of the Parsonage, which served as a meeting place for all sorts of parish purposes. The Mothers' Union banner was certainly made locally early the century, and a new central panel with Virgin and Child was worked by a parishioner after the Second World War. Through Easter-tide and Christmas-tide the high altar is vested in an elaborately embroidered white frontal. It has recently been restored by the Royal School of Needlework, where it was identified as a work of the School in the 1890s. The most splendid set of Eucharistic vestments reflects the work of that frontal, but in the style of a craftswoman who has recently taken up vestment design and production. The same parishioner has made other vestments for the church, designed with the particular style of the church and its ornaments in mind.
Up to the present
The Vestry/Meeting Room was built in 1971, and the south porch links the original building with that, now essential, addition. The wearing out of timber was hastened by dry-rot, discovered in 1977. In the years following, a major programme of restoration provided the present concrete floor and new furnishings throughout. The font was moved close to the chancel arch, but the font cover, designed for the church in 1893, is still in its original position at the west end where it surmounts a book display cupboard. Only the organ console now occupies the 1877 organ chamber on the south side of the chancel; the organ itself, much enlarged, stands on an impressive platform in the north transept. The building can now be used for music, drama and conferences, and has been the scene of a court hearing and harvest supper, as well as the regular activity of the worship of God.