Shalfleet Church Guide

AN INTRODUCTION TO

SHALFLEET CHURCH AND ITS PARISH

(Prepared by Brian Meade and published in 2002. Pictures taken by me)

Click on links for other pictures of inside

Church Plan

We are glad that you are visiting St Michael's Church People have been worshipping God here for well over 900 years of the 2000-year history (so far) of the Christian faith: an awe-inspiring thought.

We would value your prayers for us and for all who live in the parish of Shalfleet. You might like to include these words:

God our Father, make the door of our church wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship and a Father's care, and narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride and lack of love; here may the tempted find help, the sorrowing receive comfort, the careless be awakened to repentance, and the penitent be assured of your mercy; and here may all you children renew theirs strength and go on their way in hope and joy through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

ORIGINS

The origins of the church are not precisely known and its original dedication has been lost. It may indeed have been dedicated to a Saxon saint.

It was founded sometime in the years between 1070 and 1086. Peroy Stone was of the opinion that it was built after the death of William Fitz Osbem (1071), who gave six other Island churches to his Abbey of Lyre, and it was thus probably built by his son, Roger de Breteuil, who was banished for rebellion in 1075.

Certainly it was recorded in the great Domesday Survey which William the Conqueror ordered to be compiled in 1085:-

Jocelyn also holds SHALFLEET. Edric held it before 1066. Then it answered for 6 hides; now for 3 hides and  ½ virgate. Land for 14 ploughs. In lordship 2; 14 villagers and 19 smallholders with 9½ ploughs. A mill at 11d;  meadow, 4 acres. A church; woodland at 20 pigs.

Geoffrey holds 2½ virgates of this land. 1 plough with 2 villagers and l smallholder. Thorgils holds ½ hide and Leofa 1 hide. They how in lordship 2 ploughs;

2 villagers and 2 smallholders with ½ plough. The value of the whole before 1066 and later £20; now £15 between them all.

(a 'hide' was a unit of tax assessment - about 120 acres - and a 'virgate' ½ of that)

After being nameless for centuries the church was dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel on September 29th, 1964 by the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt.Rev.J.H.L.Phillips.

THE TOWER

The tower is the oldest part of the church and is remarkable for its massive structure, the walls being over five feet thick. Built in the later eleventh century, it may in fact have pre-dated the church and served from the start as a stronghold for local inhabitants when threatened by Invaders or piratical marauders. It must have been almost invulnerable as there were no openings at all at ground level and access was gained only by climbing an external ladder and scrambling over the parapet. The structure may occasion comparisons with the strongly built tower keep of Chepstow Castle, the stronghold of William Fitz Osbern who had responsibility for the Welsh border area.

The need for such a stronghold is made clear by the vulnerability of the Newtown River and the surrounding area and its attractiveness to  seaborne raiders over the centuries, in particular the Danes at the end of the tenth century and culminating in the frequent French attacks of the fourteenth century - especially in 1377 when Yarmouth, Newtown and Newport all suffered much destruction. Defence of the Island against invaders remained a constant preoccupation, hence the

provision of a 3-pounder gun, inscribed 'Schawflet', which was kept in the tower until 1779, and which must have been ready for use when the Spanish Armada threatened the Island in 1588.

THE TWELFTH CENTURY

Apart from the tower the only existing portions of the original church are the north door and the foundations of the north wall of the Norman nave, built  in 1150. The north wall was once lit by a fine Perpendicular window in whose stained glass appeared the arms of William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who gave the advowson to his Convent of Bisham in Berkshire in 1414.

Over the north door is the quaintly carved tympanum, whose subject of a bearded man apparently resting his hands on the heads of two affronted lions has exercised many scholarly minds: Adam naming the animals beneath the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden; Daniel in the Lions' Den; StMark with lions; or David overcoming the lion and the bear ?

A narrow south aisle may have been built in 1190 as there are some signs of a widening in the west wall.

  THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

In 1270 a great remodelling, and therefore enlargement, of the church took place when the present south aisle with its fine arcade of slender Purbeck piers was added as a vicarial church - probably to accommodate the manorial tenants, whereas the original nave would have been for the exclusive use of the lord of the manor and his family.

The aisle is remarkable for being the only one on the Island, apart from at Arreton and the domestic chapel at Carisbrooke Castle, where Purbeck stone was used, and for its south windows which have a possibly unique oval tracery in their heads. As late as 1796 the arms of Isabella de Fortibus appeared in one of these windows; Lord of the Island from 1283 to 1293, she may well have commissioned the work herself.

Slightly later, in 1290, the chancel was built, apparently by the same architect who shaped the chancel to the church of St George at Arreton. The great arch was also opened at this time in the east wall of the tower, but because of the lack of foundations for the latter, built as it was on clay, serious subsidence was caused in the wall above the arch.

THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES

There are few traces of fourteenth century work but a western buttress was added at the south angle of the tower and the original round-headed windows in its massive walls were filled in with Transitional Decorated perpendicular tracery.

In the fifteenth century, probably during the tenure of the manor by Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, the south porch was added, as also the south buttress to the east of it, while the church was re-roofed throughout and square heads inserted to the south-east and east windows of the south aisle.

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

The north porch was built in 1754 and the door has that date roughly cut on the inside of it; in the same year a cupola was added to the tower.

At a meeting in June 1796 a committee of five gentlemen was appointed to 'Get an estimate of the Expense of Building a Singing Gallery and to proceed to raise a subscription for Building the Same'. The bill for its erection was paid between Easter 1798 and 1800. However, this may have created too much strain on the west wall and it was later removed.

In 1800 the cupola was replaced by a wooden, tile-hung steeple, the subject of a well-known rhyme about Shalfleet people:-

Shalfleet poor and simple people

Sold their bells to build a steeple

No strengthening of the tower was carried out at this time to help bear its weight and this was to lead to later troubles.

In 1812 the north wall was rebuilt, on its original foundations, the work unfortunately being shoddily effected using a mixture of brick and stone and its windows being given makeshift wooden tracery, some of it subsequently replaced by stone mullions.

In 1889 a general restoration of the church was carried out. The tower arch - closed up since its medieval construction - was, perhaps mistakenly, unblocked; a door was out in the north-east corner of the tower; the east window of the south aisle was re-headed; the plaster and the whitewash were removed and the fifteenth century roof timber were exposed.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In 1912 the steeple was removed because of the obvious strain imposed on the tower structure beneath it. In 1914 the north-east comer of the tower in fact collapsed and so in 1916 a certain amount of underpinning work was carried out, while the ivy was now stripped from the tower walls.

1931 saw further restoration of the roof, woodwork and the columns. In 1952 the chancel roof was restored and in 1964 woodwork in the nave and tower was treated for woodworm.

FURNITURE  

The font is a made-up affair with a late sixteenth century bowl placed upon a Doric cap, and is similar to one at  Carisbrooke.

The oak pulpit, with its carved designs and a book rest on brackets all round, is of the time of Charles I.

The altar rails are of the eighteenth century and the reredos, installed in 1908, incorporates the Elizabethan communion table with its inscription and the panelling includes oak from Arreton church, St Nicholas Chapel at Carisbrooke Castle and HMS Nettle.

The box pews with their H-hinges are of the eighteenth century.

The rood screen was erected as a memorial to Thomas Hollis, the sexton from 1854 to 1909.

Within three years £197.19s.5d had been collected to pay for the two-manual organ, built by Mr Sims of Southampton, and for its carriage from Cowes. The 'Opening of the New Organ Service' was held on February 4th 1886 - "a red letter day in the annals of this Parish", as the Parish Magazine recorded it.  It was first placed at the east end of the nave, where the pulpit is now, and only later moved to the west end.  

The thirteenth century piscina remains in the wall of the south aisle, to the right of the altar. (Note : In the pre-Reformation English Catholic Church, Mass was celebrated several times. Part of the mass requires the ritual washing of vessels. Most altars had a piscina beside them, which was a basin with a drain set in the wall. Water was poured from a jug over the vessels to wash them; the water drained away into sanctified ground in the churchyard.)

Just outside the south door there is scratched on the east jamb of the doorway a mass clock, but the later addition of the south porch must have rendered it useless

Two bells are hung: the Tenor is 35¾" diameter and 9 cwt in weight; its note is B flat; cast In 1815 at the foundry of Thomas Mears in Whitechapel, London; inscribed -'May all whom I shall summon to the grave the blessings of a well spent life receive'. Thos.Way   Jas.Street Churchwardens 1815. The Treble was cast in 1807 by Mears; J.Jolllffe C.W 2.0.3 J.Cooper

Although in the early years of Edward VI (1547-53) much church plate was sold off in accordance with the beliefs of the Protestant Reformers - and Shalfleet's sale of this raised £3.ls.4d - the church still possesses two patens dated 1594 end 1705 and a chalice of 1798.

MEMORIALS

At the west end of the south aisle there lie two sepulchral slabs. One of these was originally thought to have covered the remains of Pagan Trenchard, the twelfth century lord of the manor, but it seems more likely to be the resting-place of a thirteenth century Trenchard. Carved in low relief on the upper surface are a pot-shaped helmet, lance and pointed shield. These slabs were, probably in Georgian days, put out in the churchyard but were later rescued, though with some damage incurred during their movement.

In the east wall of the vicarial church is set a nameless mural tablet, dated 1630, possibly to member of the Worsley family.

In the east end of the north wall is set the parish War Memorial window. This stained-glass window, featuring  St Nicholas and St George and the inscription 'I am the light of the world' commemorates those who gave their lives in the Great War and was dedicated on August 3rd 1920. (Can you see the aeroplane and the submarine in the design ?)

The fine stained-glass east window of the chancel is a memorial to Dr Wyndham Cottle of Ningwood House, who died in June 1919.  

In the chancel are also several tablets in memory of members of the Wilkinson family who occupied Parsonage Farm on the site of what is now the New Burial Ground.

Above the north door is the Coat-of-arms of George IV (1820-1830) and the names "Jas. Whittington and Thos. Way", who were Churchwardens from 1824 to 1833.  

THE PARISH

The parish consists of the village of Shalfleet and the outlying hamlets of Ningwood, Newbridge, Wellow, Cranmore and Hamstead. It stretches from the Solent in the north to near Chessell in the south and as far west as Bouldnor,on the edge of Yarmouth. It has a population of about 1300, much the same as the 1245 recorded in the 1851 Census, but the village of Shalfleet has grown considerably since the Second World War. It is in the main, as it has always been, an agricultural area with many farmsteads and forestry in Bouldnor and at Hamstead, but in the 19^th Century It spawned some industrial activity, notably brickworks on the clays of Hamstead, Bouldnor, Ningwood and Newbridge, and quarries near Chessell producing quantities of limestone. There were extensive salt-pans at Lower Hamstead, while Shalfleet Quay, on the Newtown River, was used in the l8th and 19th Centuries by vessels of up to 500 tons to land coal and some slate and carry sway Island corn - part of the original stone warehouse survives. Shalfleet Mill, recorded in

Domesday, was driven by a waterwheel and the nearby bakery supplied bread until the 1920's. Tourism has become significant with walkers using the coastal and inland paths, a busy caravan site at Newbridge and the Newtown River a popular haunt for yachtsmen, who land at Shalfleet and Hamstead Quays, and for birdwatchers in the nature reserve.

In July 1889 the Freshwater, Yamouth and Newport Railway Company opened to passengers with a station at Ningwood and a viaduct over the Caul Bourne at Cooke's Farm; taken over later by the Southern Railway, it finally closed to traffic in September 1953.

Its three manors are recorded in the Domesday Book. Shalfleet Manor House is part Elizabethan and part Jacobean; the manor itself, valued at £20 in the time of Edward the Confessor and held through much of the Middle Ages by the Trenchard family, later passed successively to the Worsley, Barrington and Simeon families.

Ningwood Manor was acquired by Thomas Hopson after the Dissolution of the Monasteries and a later member of this Catholic family was Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Hopson, who distinguished himself in the Battle of Vigo Bay in 1702. The original house was Jacobean but in 1784 Sir John Pinhorn, a London banker, added the impressive Georgian front with its classical porch. Later it passed into the hands of the Cottle family, Thomas being Vicar of Shalfleet in the mid-19th century. On his death in 1895 he left it to his nephew, Dr Wyndham Cottle, an army surgeon, who died in 1919 bequeathing the manor to the RSPCA to be used as a 'Home of Rest for Animals', especially retired horses, which it remained until 1977. He also made a bequest to set up the almshouses in Warlands Lane.

The medieval lands of Hamstead Manor were given to Christchurch Priory and Quarr Abbey, but after the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was acquired by the Hopson family of Ningwood. In the nineteenth century the Hamstead farmhouse had the distinction of being redesigned and rebuilt by John Nash, the famous architect of Regent Street and East Cowes Castle; the estate was taken over by his wife's relatives, the Pennethornes, who lived there until 1923, and several of the family are buried in Shalfleet churchyard. Nothing of Nash's house remains and the present day Grange was built only in the later nineteenth century.

The only other place of worship is Wellow Baptist Church, home to the oldest Baptist fellowship on the Island (founded 1801). Sadly, several Methodist chapels have closed.

Around the church and manor house cluster in traditional manner some of the older village buildings: the 18th Century New Inn, the old Malthouse and the Old Clergy House, a former vicarage which retains some 14th Century roofing. Another former vicarage was situated opposite the church, in front of the manor, but had to be demolished in the 1930's as it was a danger to traffic, while Shalfleet House had also served in this capacity in the nineteenth century.

Apart from the New Inn one other old hostelry survives - the Horse and Groom - on the main road at Ningwood.  

Shalfleet Church of England Primary School, which serves the area and is situated at Ningwood, was first built in 1850 and still retains the original schoolhouse.

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22 August 2005