A Brief History of St. Peter's Church

From the outside, St. Peter's Church looks very much as it has looked for many hundreds of years - a medieval Parish Church.

Once inside, though, things look rather different. You find a modern, open church, with chairs arranged so that the People gather around the Table, yet you will notice that the building shows many varied styles of architecture, for the Church goes back to Saxon times.

The current building is built on the site of a small Saxon church which is said to have been burnt down about 750
AD. The earliest record of the church appears in the Domesday Book (1080 AD), which mentions a chapel belonging to the church of Crondall, a village about 10 miles away. The approximate extent of the Saxon church is shown on the Plan here. Only the north wall was left, and when the Normans extended the church in about 1100 AD, it was raised and extended to its present length as far as the tower arch. By 1220 AD the east end (which is now the Chapel) was completed, and in the 14th century an aisle was added on the south side, again, as shown on the plan. In 1878 a major restoration was carried out when a vestry was added behind the present altar and the arch was built by Sir Arthur Blomfield, a well known Victorian architect. A choir vestry (now a Meeting Room and Kitchen) was added in 1900 (the date can be seen on the outside wall) and in 1967 a clergy vestry was built on the foundations of an anchorite's cell, which is now used as a Prayer Cell.

On the night of 5th May 1979 the church was burnt down for a second time, this time by an arsonist, leaving only the walls, the charred timbers of the tower and the cracked bells. The story of the fire and the rebuilding is told here. In the rebuilding of the church, great care was taken to save what could be preserved and at the same time to enlarge and modernise the building, extending some 25 feet into the churchyard on the south side. Single lines of darker tiles in the current church floor show approximately where the south wall of the Saxon church was and also the line of the south wall of St. Peter's before the fire. You may have noticed that there is no stained glass in the windows and the windows themselves look very new, as the old windows were destroyed in the fire.

Two and a half years after the fire, the new St. Peter's was consecrated by the Bishop of Winchester on the 21st  November 1981. This remarkable achievement was in no small way due to the vision and driving force of the Vicar at that time, Piers Warburton.