CHURCH.
In 1086 a priest held ½ hide at Great
Stanmore. (fn. 93) A church, presumably the rectory and
advowson, was among the possessions recovered by
Richard, abbot of St. Albans (d. 1119) (fn. 94) and evidently was part of the property which William of
Mortain had restored by 1106. (fn. 95) Although new sites
were found for the building in the 17th and 19th
centuries, (fn. 96) a single church has always served the
whole parish.
The rights of St. Albans were confirmed by Pope
Clement III in 1188, to provide vessels for the
monks' refectory, (fn. 97) and by Honorius III in 1219. (fn. 98)
Thereafter it seems that the abbots retained the
advowson until the Dissolution, although by the mid
13th century they owned nothing else, save a portion
which presumably was used on buying vessels. (fn. 99)
The first recorded date of a presentation is 1322. (fn. 1)
The Crown presented three times in 1349, when
there was no abbot, and once in 1373, for reasons
unknown. (fn. 2) In 1464 the next presentation to the
rectory was granted to the Lord Chancellor George
Neville, who, when archbishop of York, exercised
his right six years later. (fn. 3) From 1539 it passed with the
lordship of the manor to the Crown and afterwards,
in turn, to Geoffrey Chamber, Sir Pedro de
Gamboa, (fn. 4) successive lessees of the manor, and the
families of Lake and Brydges. (fn. 5) James Brydges, duke
of Chandos, by will dated 1742, left the advowson to
trustees, who presumably sold it to Andrew Drummond, thereby separating it from the manor.
William Hallett, the purchaser of Canons, claimed
the advowson from Henry, duke of Chandos, (fn. 6) but
Drummond presented in 1749 and his grandson in
the 1780s. The marquess of Abercorn held both
lordship and advowson, presenting in 1847 and
1848, but in 1857 presentation was by the Revd.
Leopold John Bernays of Elstree (Herts.). The right
has since remained with the Bernays family or
its trustees, Mrs. N. Bernays being the patron in
1965. (fn. 7)
The church was said to be worth 6 marks in the
mid 13th century, when the abbot of St. Albans took
2 marks from the profits, (fn. 8) and £2 in 1291, when the
abbot received £1. (fn. 9) Great Stanmore was expressly
excluded from the taxation on churches in 1428. (fn. 10)
The rectory was valued at £13 6s. 8d. in 1535 (fn. 11) and
at £10 in 1547. (fn. 12) Early in the 18th century the benefice was estimated to be worth £100, (fn. 13) as it was at
the close, (fn. 14) and by 1835 the net income was £566. (fn. 15)
In 1838 the rector was awarded a rent-charge of £444
in lieu of all tithes, a sum which was still payable in
1887. (fn. 16)
The glebe in 1680 amounted to more than 32 a.;
9 a. adjoined the parsonage house, 7 a. lay south of
the old churchyard, and the rest was scattered in the
common fields. (fn. 17) Under an Act of 1784 (fn. 18) some 12 a.,
worth £25 a year and including the old churchyard,
were exchanged with George Drummond for nearly
20 a., worth £35. (fn. 19) There were 41 a. in 1838, some
6 a. lying next to the rectory house and the rest in
two blocks to the south of Old Church Lane. The
glebe was then worth £82 a year (fn. 20) but had shrunk to
23 a., worth £64 11s., by 1887, to 12 a. by 1926, and
to 2 a. by 1940. (fn. 21)
It is not certain where the parsonage house stood
before 1721, when George Hudson, rector 1715-49,
built a new one to the south-east of the church, at the
top of Old Church Lane. The duke of Chandos gave
the timber and perhaps also paid the architect,
Edward Shepherd, whom he often employed as a
surveyor. The building was red-brick and threestoreyed, facing south across a pond. (fn. 22) A wing was
added in 1850 but the house was divided in 1949 and
pulled down in 1960, when the present Rectory was
built a few yards to the north-west. (fn. 23)
Most early incumbents were probably pluralists
or absentees, since Great Stanmore was not a rich
living. John Nicholl exchanged it for West Angmering (Suss.) in 1423 (fn. 24) and John Cortell was
licensed to hold it with one other benefice in 1476. (fn. 25)
Alfonso de Salignas, presumably a nominee and
fellow countryman of Sir Pedro de Gamboa, paid a
priest to serve the cure in 1547. (fn. 26) After the building
of the 18th-century rectory house, incumbents seem
normally to have been resident. Arthur Chauvel,
rector 1788-1847, was also a canon of St. Paul's and
vicar of Chigwell (Essex) in 1835. (fn. 27)
All the parishioners, it was said, could conveniently attend the church in 1650. (fn. 28) The Presbyterian
Samuel Stancliffe, later one of the first managers of
the Common Fund, was rector from 1658 until his
ejection in 1662. (fn. 29) A Sunday school, started by
1790, (fn. 30) was attended by between 30 and 40 children
in 1819. (fn. 31) Services took place twice every Sunday at
the end of the 18th century, when between 50 and
70 people received the sacraments four times a year.
By 1810 the sacraments were administered 'nearly
monthly'. (fn. 32) Two Sunday services were still held in
1851, attended by some 450 people in the morning
and 400 in the afternoon, as well as about 80 children
from the Sunday school. (fn. 33) There has usually been
an assistant curate, paid £50 in 1782 and 1797, since
the late 18th century. (fn. 34)
From c. 1300 until 1632 the parish church,
probably dedicated to St. Mary, stood north of the
moat (fn. 35) on what became the corner of Old Church
Lane and Wolverton Road. (fn. 36) Possibly there had been
earlier churches here, of which nothing is known.
Fragments uncovered by builders in 1892 showed
the medieval church to have measured no more than
81 ft. by 22 ft., with small transepts and a 15thcentury extension. (fn. 37) No trace survives, apart from
the tomb of Baptist Willoughby, rector 1563-1610,
later in the garden of Haslemere (no. 44 Old Church
Lane), and the Burnell monument in the modern
parish church. (fn. 38) In 1632 William Laud, as bishop of
London, consecrated the church of St. John, whose
ivy-clad ruins still stand at the western end of the
churchyard. The building was paid for by Sir John
Wolstenholme and so later denounced by the Puritans as a private chapel. (fn. 39) Its roofless walls and threestage battlemented tower are of brick with stone
dressings; the body forms a plain rectangle with no
separate chancel, although one 18th-century annexe
to the north remains and there are traces of another.
The south doorway, attributed to Nicholas Stone,
and most of the windows are round-headed; the east
window is venetian, an early occurrence of this
feature. (fn. 40) The table-tomb of Sir John Wolstenholme,
his father, and two grandsons, dated 1639, stands
within the ruins, together with the ornate mausoleum
of the Hollond family, dated 1866; there are several
tablets of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but
most of the more elaborate monuments have been
moved to the new church. (fn. 41)
After the Laudian church had been pronounced
too small and unsafe, the foundation stone of ST.
JOHN THE EVANGELIST was laid in 1849 by
Queen Adelaide at her last public appearance. (fn. 42) The
church, consecrated in 1850, was built on near-by
land given by Col. Tovey-Tennent of the Pynnacles,
at a cost of £7,855, of which £3,000 was raised by a
church-rate and a similar sum given by the earl of
Aberdeen and his son, the Hon. Douglas Gordon,
who was rector from 1848 until 1857. Henry Clutton,
the architect, (fn. 43) used Kentish rag and Bath stone in
the Decorated style to build a church comprising a
wide chancel with a chapel to the south, nave, north
and south aisles, and north-west tower. The organ
was later moved to the chapel from near the south
door. Vestries on the north side of the chancel were
converted into the chapel of St. George by E. B.
Glanfield in 1955, and a new vestry was built further
north. Alterations to lighten the chancel and emphasize the altar were completed in 1961; they included
whitening the walls, removing the brass communion
rails and much woodwork, including the choirscreen, and lowering and re-tiling the sanctuary
floor. The central light of Thomas Willement's east
window, erected in memory of Queen Adelaide, was
redesigned in 1950. Despite such changes there are
many fittings, among them a font given by Queen
Adelaide and a stained glass window in the south
aisle attributable to William Morris & Co., (fn. 44) to
recall the wealth of Victorian Stanmore.
The oldest fittings, which must have been in the
two earlier churches, are a brass inscription to John
Burnell (d. 1605) and, above it, a marble and alabaster wall monument erected by his widow Barbara,
with kneeling figures of herself, her husband, and
eight children; details of the Burnells' charities are
inscribed, with the provisions, still observed, for the
monument's maintenance by the Clothworkers'
Company of London. Other pieces from the Laudian
church include an octagonal font, bearing the
Wolstenholmes' arms, of white marble on a grey
marble baluster-stem, and a white marble recumbent
effigy from the tomb of Sir John Wolstenholme
(d. 1639), both of them by Nicholas Stone. A large
stone monument, crammed beneath the tower and
perhaps wrongly reassembled, depicts John Wolstenholme (d. 1669), his wife, and two children, lying in
a heavily draped four-poster bed. A black marble
and alabaster tablet commemorates the wife and
three daughters of John Collins, dated 1670, (fn. 45)
some memorials to the Dalton family include one to
John Dalton by John Bacon the younger, dated
1791, (fn. 46) and there is an effigy by J. E. Boehm of
George Hamilton-Gordon, earl of Aberdeen (d.
1860), former Prime Minister and father of the
rector Douglas Gordon. A mid-17th-century record
of the parish's charities hangs in the north aisle. The
churchyard contains the unmarked grave of William
Hart (d. 1683), son of Shakespeare's sister Joan, (fn. 47)
table-tombs of 1705 and 1714, (fn. 48) and a winged figure
over the grave of Sir William Gilbert (d. 1911);
Lord Halsbury (d. 1921), three times Lord Chancellor, is also buried there. (fn. 49)
The tower has eight bells, six of them from the
Laudian church: (i) and (ii) 1684, James Bartlett;
(iii) 1632, Brian Eldridge; (iv) 1756, Lester and
Pack; (v) 1632, Brian Eldridge (recast 1888); (vi)
1632, Brian Eldridge. (fn. 50) The plate includes a flagon
of 1616, given by Barbara Burnell, paten covers of
1632 and 1637, and a stand-paten of 1709, all silvergilt. (fn. 51) Registers record baptisms, marriages, and
deaths from 1599. (fn. 52)