Page 9 - Edition Summer 22 News and Views revised 31.05.pub (Read-Only)

Now let us consider the history of non-conformity in the area. Hampreston has a parish Church,
but the area north of the Stour from Parley to Colehill, essentially its parish, had 4 individuals
requesting a licence for their home to be used as a dissenting meeting house, in the period 1743
to 1795, which is much higher than applied in other similar areas in Dorset. The first was George
Saunders of Longham (Baptist); 1757 James Butler of Hampreston, also Baptist; 1787 Nicholas
Wareham (Anabaptist). In 1795 William Neave, one of the extended family of Quakers in
Fordingbridge, who was the miller by the Stour bridge, which later became the water pumping
station, applied to hold Methodist meetings in his house. Presumably he wished to enjoy the
greater energy to be found in the Wesley’s pattern of worship, perhaps he enjoyed singing! Thus
the area had become a very fertile ground for non-conformity. Surely a possible explanation
might well be as a result of George Fox meeting local people and the Quaker presence.

After about 1800 there was a flurry of applications for Methodist meeting houses across the
county, and other Independents too. Skinner Street Church in Poole had begun local missionary
activity with Rev Edward Ashburner who arrived in 1766, and for twenty years he conducted
worship every Monday evening in Lytchett Minster, and occasionally preaching in local villages,
including Longham. In 1801 he was succeeded by Rev Thomas Durant, who continued and
expanded this activity in the area from Spetisbury to Ripley and including Longham of course.

Now let us change the focus. From about 1784 and during the Napoleonic wars a majority of
years had poor harvests, and official agricultural depression finally happened in 1815. This was
aggravated in 1816 and 1817, following the climate change caused by the volcanic eruption of
Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Let the poverty in this period be illustrated by the experience of
one boy, whose name I discovered carved in the Quire at Christchurch Priory.

William Walden probably born in 1793, a pupil of the Priory school, applied for help from the
Overseers of the Poor in August 1817 at Lyndhurst. He had to recount his recent life. In 1804 he
was apprenticed for 5 years to a Willliam Rolls, a butcher at Longham, who failed in business a
year later. He returned to live with his father in Lyndhurst for a year, then was a day labourer in
Christchurch; followed by 5 years on the Isle of Wight. Next he was a weekly servant with a Mr
Neale at Lyndhurst and he married Sofia early in 1817. He was now out of work, possibly had a
child and was destitute. There is no official record of the Overseers decision, but often
applicants were escorted over the parish boundary because they did not want to accept any
financial responsibility for people who did not ‘belong’. Local historians rejoice when they find
unusual Christian names, and a Sophia Walden was buried at Sopley in 1838 aged 41 with
several Williams buried in Christchurch in the previous decade, one of whom was probably
‘ours’.

From the individual, let us now turn to the broader picture in Longham. One of the deacons/
elders at Skinner Street, George Kemp junior bought a property in Longham, most likely around
1815. He was part of a merchant family, with banking connections, and that year two ships had
arrived safely in Poole and they had become comparatively wealthy. He discovered at first hand
the extent of the poverty. The church raised money to erect the small hall both as a school and
as a place of worship, which opened in 1819. The number of Sunday School children soon
reached 150 and the congregation grew also such that a vestry was added to seat 100 people.
Around 1835 Joseph Notting, a tanner and boot manufacturer of Poole took charge. In 1839
several speakers at the annual Congregational Assembly urged larger churches to expand
buildings in the suburbs and this may well have influenced Joseph to plan a larger building,
th
which was opened on December 29 1841 – as we see in the photograph.

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