St Lawrence's Church (St Laurence) is a Grade II listed church in Ecchinswell,National Grid Reference: SU 50123 598941301432 Date first listed:16-May-1966 Hampshire, England, in the rural deanery of Whitchurch, within the Diocese of Winchester, designed by Bodley & Garner, 1885–87, at a time when Ninian Comper was their articled pupil, 1883-1887.Sir Ninian Comper, Symondson & Bucknall, 2006, page 22. It has 200 sittings.Hampshire: Winchester and the North, by Michael Bullen, John Crook, Rodney Hubbuck and Nikolaus Pevsner, YALE University Press, 2010, page 256

The Grade II listed lychgate, also designed by Bodley & Garner, was added in honour of William Howley Kingsmill (1838-1894) in 1895.1157747, first listed: 18 May 1984

St Lawrence's is the parish church for the villages of Ecchinswell, Bishop's Green, and Sydmonton.

The long and thin parishes of Sydmonton and Ecchinswell stretch from the River Enborne and the county boundary in the north to the Port Way, the Roman road that ran from Silchester to Old Sarum, in the south.

History The foundation stone of the new St Lawrence's church, was laid on 10 August 1885 by Sydmonton's Mrs. Kingsmill (Constance Mary Portal,William Howley Kingsmill (1838-1894), of Sydmonton Court, maternal grandson of William Howley, DL, JP, (1766-1848), Archbishop of Canterbury, accordingly William Howley Kingsmill was born in Lambeth Palace. His paternal grandfather was Rev. John Stephens (1769-1814), (later Kingsmill from 1806), of Oriel College, Oxford, vicar of Chewton Mendip with Emborough, Somerset. In 1802 Stephens/Kingsmill married (in High Littleton) miss Dorothy Mogg, daughter of Jacob Mogg. wife of William Howley Kingsmill),Saturday 15 August 1885, Berkshire Chronicle 'dedicated like the ancient fabric to Saint Lawrence', on a more convenient site. In 1852 William White described the old St Laurence : 'The church is a small ancient fabric, without tower, situated in low swampy ground'. The new was consecrated by Harold Browne, the Lord Bishop of Winchester, on Friday 15 October 1886. Rev Canon (George Raymond) Portal (1827-1889), rural dean and uncle of Mrs W. H. Kingsmill, read the Epistle, and the Gospel was read by the Ven. Archdeacon who also gave the sermon. Archdeacon Sumner, George Sumner, Ven. Archdeacon of Winchester, was husband of the founder of the Mothers' Union and son of a previous Bishop of Winchester, Charles Sumner, KG (1790 – 1874). Sumner's sermon was on Revelation 21, verse 22 : And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.Saturday 16 October 1886, Portsmouth Evening NewsSaturday 16 October 1886, Reading Mercury, Oxford Gazette, Newbury Herald and Berks County PaperSaturday 16 October 1886, Berkshire Chronicle The church cost £5,000.Kelly's Directory of Berkshire and Hampshire, 1931.

Exterior Knapped flint with Bathstone dressings. The south-west porch-tower has a weatherboard belfry with a steep pyramidal shingled spire, at the west end there is an ashlar-faced projection around the tower providing the bell-chamber stairs.

Interior The nave and chancel are in one, with undecorated chancel stalls and aisles. There is a two-seater sedilia in stone. The east window is placed high to allow for a reredos, now missing. Above the altar and some of the chancel there is a ceilure, in red and green. Instead of a chancel arch there is a magnificent open screen combined with the rood beam. The spired font cover is by Bodley & Garner, dated 1893. There were two ogee topped openings between the nave to the aisles, the northern one has been blocked up. High up on the chancel's eastern wall are parts of a fabric wall covering by Bodley & Garner, executed by Watts & Co.

Organ by Messrs. Bevington & Sons, London, 1887, which cost £230. Organ case by Bodley & Garner.National Pipe Organ Register index number: D01653 The case is inscribed: Alleluia Gloria Tibi Jesu Rex aetna Gloriae. In May 1887 'special services of a bright and hearty character' were given for the new organ. At the 3 pm Benediction service the sermon was given by the Dean of Winchester, Dr Kitchen, and Rev William Henry Castell Malton, curate of St Frideswide's Church, read the lesson.Reading Mercury, Oxford Gazette, Newbury Herald and Berks County Paper, 14 May 1887.

There are stained glass windows by Burlison and Grylls, a company founded in 1868 at the instigation of Bodley & Garner. The stained glass east-end window is dated 1886 while the west window shows Saint Nicholas and Saint Christopher, for William Howley Kingsmill (1838-1894), of Sydmonton Court, is dated 1933,Pevsner given by his widow and children. A brass plaque says that the east windows were placed by (major-general) Edward Coysgarne Sim (1838-1900) (Royal Engineers) and Alice Frances Howley Sim his wife to the Glory of God and in pious memory of (her parents) William Kingsmill, who died 11 February 1865, and of Anne Jane his wife (daughter of Archbishop Howley), who died 20 June 1871, also in memory of (their son) Arthur Coysgarne Sim, Midshipman, RN who died 24 February 1894, aged 18.ROYAL SAPPERS AND MINERS in Western Australia

In the south-easterly window is a Ploughman by Francis Skeat 1984 for Dick Woodridge, of Park Farm, Sydmonton.Hampshire: Winchester and the North, by Michael Bullen, John Crook, Rodney Hubbuck and Nikolaus Pevsner, YALE University Press, 2010, page 256. On the south aisle there is a stained glass window of St Anne, in memory of Anne Hill, organist of this parish for 52 years, died 9 November 1930.

There are monumental stone inscriptions to local landowner Lt. Colonel Andrew de Portal Kingsmill (1881-1956), DSO, OBE, MC, DL, JP,London Gazette, 12-12-1944, 2nd Battalion, Hampshire Home Guard. of North Sydmonton house,Eton; Christ Church, Oxford; Grenadier Guards; Alderman of Hampshire County Council; Deputy Chairman of Ind Coope. (son of William Howley Kingsmill of the west window and lynch gate here), and of his wife (Olga) Gertrude (1886-1966).

In the old vestry behind the organ there is a marble scroll monument to: 'John Digweed, Esquire, of this place. He fell asleep February 1843 aged 76 years'. This John Digweed of Ecchinswell House, was interned inside the old church; the horizontal gravestone is still there, now in the open air, all that remains above ground to mark where the original St Laurence's was. Churchwarden Digweed's nephew Lt. Colonel William Henry Digweed (1810-1881), JP, of Ecchinswell House, donated the holy acre for the new church.W. H. Digweed matriculated, Pembroke College, Oxford, 3rd November 1829, son of Harry Digweed (died Paris, aged 77, 1848). This is the family that rented the manor and large farm in Steventon, thereby grew up with and were friends of Jane Austen.from Victoria County History, 1911: 'A charity called the Digweed charity founded by Colonel William Henry Digweed of Ecchinswell House provides a bed for any parishioner of Ecchinswell at Winchester Hospital and also assistance for the poor there amounting to £4 19s. per annum through the investment of £200 in consols. The charity is administered by the Guardians of the Poor.'

On the south wall there is an inscription on stone, cantate domino canticum novum, to singer and writer Lionel Portman (1873-1940) of Swaites house.Amongst Portman's books were: Three Asses in Bolivia, London, 1922; Hugh Rendal: A Public School Story, London, 1904; and Station Studies: Being the Jottings of an African Official, London, 1902.Kelly's Directory of Berkshire and Hampshire, 1931.

Timeline 1852, Chapelry of Ecchinswell & Sydmonton was separated (sequestrated) from St Mary's, Kingsclere; 1853, Vicarage house built, by Frederick Digweed for Rev Lewis Rugg;Kelly's Directory of Berkshire and Hampshire, 1931. 1853, sister church of St. Mary, Sydmonton, rebuilding finished;St Mary's Sydmonton, was rebuilt in 1853 at a cost of £3,300, of which £2,300 was given by Mr. William Kingsmill (died 1865), and the remainder by his father-in-law, William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury. The parishioners also helped by carting material, &c. (William White, History Gazetteer and Directory of Hampshire, 1859). With six bells, all by Mears & Stainbank, the tenor and fifth being cast in 1853 and the others in 1869. Info from A History of the County of Hampshire, volume iv, Victoria County History, London, 1911. 1861, school built, by J. P. Harrison for William Kingsmill (died 1865) of Sydmonton; 10 August 1885, foundation stone laid by Mrs. Kingsmill (Constance Mary Portal, wife of William Howley Kingsmill); 15 October 1886, dedicated, consecrated, by the Lord Bishop of Winchester; 1979 Parish of Ecchinswell with Sydmonton was joined with parish of Burghclere with Newtown to form a combined benefice. circa 1980, sister church of St Mary, Sydmonton closed; 2014, deaths of Geoffrey and Pat Eastop.

Incumbents (Incomplete list) Rev Wilfrid Anderson Boyce (1849-1935); Rev Herbert Heriot-Hill, (1867-1929); Rev Bernard Norton Adams, BA, of Selwyn College, (born 1881),Kelly's Directory of Berkshire and Hampshire, 1931. 1929-1931;Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1935, 64th issue. Rev Herbert George Wright,1904-1910, curate of St Alban's, Cathcart, Eastern Cape, South Africa 1932-?;Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1935, 64th issue. Rev Thomas Michael Evans (1876-1962), 1937-1955; Rev Canon Anthony Jardine (born 1938), 1973–1987; Rev Martin Wyatt Garner (1939-2008), 1987–1993;later Rector of Ewelme, Brightwell Baldwin and Cuxham with Easington. Rev Carl le Prevost (born 1963), 1993–1998;Chaplain, Bryanston School Rev David Bartholomew (born 1950), 1998–2020; Rev Anthony Smith (born 1957), 2020-.Crockford's Clerical Directory, 2014-2015, 103rd edition.

Tower In 2022 the three bells dated 1912, 1886 and 1886 weighing 4-1-3, 5-1-25 and 6-2-17 by John Warner & Sons were replaced by six weighing between 1-0-22 and 3-1-4 by Mears & Stainbank (1963), Gillett & Co (1885), Gillett & Johnston (1935), and the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (1871), tuned to B, A, G, F♯, E and D.Dove's Guide for Church Bell Ringers, on-line entry, managed by the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers

Gallery

References