New Forest churches – Eling, Copythorne, Marchwood, Colbury, and Netley Marsh
Summary
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© Crown copyright. All rights reserved New Forest National Park Authority. Licence 1000114703, 2014.
New Forest churches
- St Mary, Eling
- St Mary, Copythorne
- St John The Apostle, Marchwood
- Christ Church, Colbury
- St Matthew, Netley Marsh
Colbury Christ Church
Good example of late Victorian Gothic revival
- An attractive late Victorian church by Benjamin Ferry, completed in 1870 and paid for by Marianne Ibbotson after she inherited the Barker-Mill estate. She chose to live at Eling rather than at Mottisfont Abbey (now owned by the National Trust)
- The church interior has hardly changed from the time it was built
- The graveyard has unmarked burials of inmates of the Ashurst Workhouse and five Second World War graves
- Near the Lych gate is the grave of Charley Shrave, a railway workman, with a carving of a train
- Unusual tapered open bellcote
- Interesting internal decorated tiled wall and floor surfaces and an external style roof to the internal porch.
Find out more
www.christchurchcolbury.hampshire.org.uk
Images top left to right: Colbury font, Eling 10th century grave marker, Marchwood font.
New Forest Churches
Eling, Copythorne, Marchwood, Colbury and Netley Marsh
For other churches leaflets, visit
www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/churches
For more information about our work or for advice please contact us:
- Call: 01590 646600
- Write to: New Forest National Park Authority, Lymington Town Hall, Avenue Road, Lymington, SO41 9ZG.
- Email: enquiries@newforestnpa.gov.uk
- Visit: www.newforestnpa.gov.uk
Cultural heritage services at the New Forest National Park Authority
The National Park Authority has specialist advisors including archaeologists, building conservation, building design and landscape staff.
We seek to conserve and enhance the special character of the New Forest by encouraging the sympathetic management and use of historic sites, buildings and areas and protecting them from decay or damaging change. We ensure that architecturally sensitive sites and areas are properly identified, treated and integrated into their environment to best effect.
Some of the work is required by law, but emphasis is also placed on offering guidance to communities so that the special places and features of the National Park are safeguarded for future generations.
Printed on FSC environmentally friendly paper. NPA 00279. September 2014.
Copythorne St Mary
Attractive brick-built church and tower
- Built in 1834 and designed by Thomas Benham, a Southampton architect
- The later chancel and other alterations were designed in 1892 by William Butterfield, better known for his multi-coloured (polychromatic) brick buildings as at Keble College, Oxford
- The 1922 tower clock is a World War I memorial
- The Memorial tablet to two World Wars is made from timber from H.M.S. Britannia (1869-1905), a Dartmouth cadet training ship.
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The churches at Copythorne, Netley Marsh, Marchwood and Colbury were all built in the 19th century to serve the historic and vast parish of Eling.
Eling church was saved from total demolition when the south aisle of the church was enlarged and rebuilt as part of a major, yet relatively sympathetic, restoration.
Come and discover the fascinating New Forest National Park and its rich cultural heritage.
Netley Marsh St Matthew
Attractive stone built church
- Designed by James Park Harrison of Oxford, completed in 1855 and strongly influenced by the high church ‘Oxford Movement’ and one of its leaders John Keble at Hursley
- Unusual cast iron grave markers in the churchyard
- Double chancel arch to support lower stone stage of the external bell turret that is covered in wooden shingles
- Generally plain interior with a 15th century style font and carvings of a squirrel and oak leaves in the chancel
- Typical Victorian decorative floor tiles in the chancel.
Marchwood St John The Apostle
Church spire dominates local landscape
- A lofty church of 1843 with grand internal proportions, designed by the Irish architect John MacDuff Derick in an Early English Gothic style
- Contains revived medieval decorative schemes
- Funding was provided by Mr Horatio Francis Kingsford Holloway of Marchwood Park, now Marchwood Priory Hospital; he had strong connections to Oxford
- Samuel Wilberforce, famous for his opposition to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, son of William Wilberforce, and slave trade abolitionist, attended the consecration of the building
- The font is a partial copy of the 12th century font in Winchester Cathedral – see illustration of detail
- An unaltered historic pipe organ by Bishop and Starr of 1877
- A range of stained glass windows.
Eling St Mary
Church by the waterside
- 10th century grave markers recovered during excavations along with evidence that the church was originally cruciform in plan
- 16th century Venetian painting of the last supper
- 18th century monuments by the nationally-significant Flemish sculptor John Rysbrack (Jan Michiel Rijsbrack 1694-1770)
- Tudor tower late 16th or early 17th century. Stone for the tower was shipped by water to Eling creek
- Very fine and unusual 13th century chancel arch and medieval nave roof
- The local preacher was evicted by Parliamentarian soldiers and Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver, presided at a wedding at the church. The local clerk expressed his opinions in his record, ‘Lord Protector Richard Cromwell, or so he calls himself’.
Image on front cover- Copythorne.