Churches of the Area

SAMBOURNE is a civil parish on its own but in ecclesiastical terms it is part of the parish of COUGHTON. More people live in Sambourne than in Coughton, so it is not surprising that the latter thought it right to build a meeting place for its Sambourne faithful. What, perhaps, is surprising is that it took them so long. A 'Sambourne Parish Room’ was opened in October,1892. The Coughton parish magazines give in detail those who contributed to the cost. Nowhere is the building called a ‘church’ or’chapel’. When, at last, the building was completed it was essentially a rectangular room with a small apse at one end which could be isolated by a sliding door. Not envisaged in the original plans, the building was supplied with a bell-turret and a porch.

The opening took the form of a shortened Evensong, sermon and hymns but no consecration, or setting aside of the building as a place oil worship, is mentioned in the Coughton magazine. People gave various items for the apse: a table, lectern, reading desk, wooden cross and various books. The ‘table’ was presumably to be used as an altar, for a Miss Donner gave ‘an altar cloth of best Utrecht velvet with embroidered cross and silk fringe’. However, the Coughton vicar laid no emphasis on this new building as a place of worship; on the contrary, he made it clear that Coughton church was to continue as the spiritual centre of the parish for the folk of Sambourne

Whatever the intentions for the new building, it certainly looked like a church: gothic windows in the main hall and apse, porch and bell-turret. All give it an ecclesiastical appearance. It is built it of brick and tile and no-one would mistake it for anything other than Victorian. its central position in the village, opposite the ‘Green Dragon’, is explained by the fact that the ground on which it stands was glebe land.

Summer 1986 Index