Futures Forum: Arboretum @ Dissenter of Sidmouth >>> tree planting Tues 10th November
The building and garden have been featured in the Herald:
Breaking news & sport in Sidmouth | Sidmouth Herald
Here is the complete text:
A short history of the
Cemetery Garden at Dissenter of Sidmouth
Dissenters’ Burial
Grounds
With the Restoration of
the monarchy, the Crown asserted control over religious observance through the 1662
Act of Uniformity, leading to the “Great Ejection” of some 2,500 parish ministers
who refused to conform.
These “non-Conformist”
ministers and their congregations met for worship, more or less in secret,
until the 1682 Act of Toleration permitted public meeting houses to be
established at a specified distance from the parish church with a licensed
minister, who must swear an oath of allegiance. They were forbidden to use
bells to summon their congregation but could signal their presence for worship
by lighting a lamp.
A deceased dissenter could
usually be buried in a Church of England burial ground, but this depended on
the vicar, who would often not allow a memorial stone at the grave. Hence
the appearance of “Dissenters’ Burial Grounds” in or near their places of
worship. There has recently been growing interest in these historic sites.
The Sidmouth Dissenters’
Meeting House and Cemetery
Early in the 18th
century, the non-conformist congregations of the Sid Valley built a meeting
house, at the corner of what is now called the High Street and All Saints Road,
by the White Horse Inn where they had previously worshipped. This Grade 2
listed building is believed to be the oldest non-conformist place of worship in
East Devon. The burial ground was on the south side of the church by the main
entrance. This doorway was closed off when the building was “improved” in the
1880s with a porch and entrance to the north. The cemetery fell into disuse,
parts of it were sold off, and it was deconsecrated. The twentieth century saw
the installation of a boiler in an underground bunker, and a lavatory for the
Schoolroom.
By the early twenty-first
century the cemetery was overgrown with elder bushes, thistles and dandy-lions,
the railings and gate were rusting, the retaining wall and path had become
hazardous, and the site was becoming little more than an eyesore at the top of
the High Street. In 2011 the Trustees of the Unitarian Dissenting Meeting House
decided to take it in hand. With donations from current users of the buildings
(East Devon Dance Academy and other community groups) as well as financial help
from the Unitarian congregation and endowments from previous generations of
Unitarians, and employing the skills of local builders, decorators, botanists
and gardeners, the site was restored, old gravestones were uncovered and a
“memorial peace garden” was planted with advice from the Sidmouth Arboretum,
who also made a gift of a crab-apple tree. The cemetery site will be formally
dedicated with the re-planting of a fig tree and a rose at sunset on November
10th 2015.
A spokesperson said: “The
identities of those whose memorial stones remain have yet to be investigated. Future
plans for the site include the commissioning of a sculpture recalling the Great
Ejection and a memorial to Hugh Barlow, chair of the Unitarian congregation who
died on August 27th 2015. As part of our commitment to
inter-generational justice, we aim to make the entire complex of buildings and
gardens at Dissenter of Sidmouth self-sustaining and carbon neutral over the
coming decades. Fifteen meters above sea-level, it has the potential to endure
as a community facility for another three centuries of change. All offers of
help will be gratefully received. Contact dissenterofsidmouth@gmail.com”
Unitarianism in Exeter
Initially a 16th
century mid-European free Christian movement which worshipped God in the spirit
of Jesus but rejected dogmatic teachings such as a belief in original sin or
that Christ is the one God, the Unitarian movement was imported to England
during the upheavals of the 17th century. The first use of the term
in England dates from 1673. Shunned by the established church, Unitarians were
not allowed to attend Oxford or Cambridge, nor were they allowed to participate
in local civic affairs until the Toleration Act of 1813. Discouraged from the professions,
the Unitarians directed their energies towards commerce and banking. As
prosperous leaders of the rising middle class they were committed to social
progress.
By the mid 18th Century,
the Unitarians were well established in Exeter, recruiting local dissenters,
and immigrants such as Johan Baring, a Lutheran wool merchant from Bremen,
whose family founded Barings Bank on Cathedral Green. Exeter's Dissenting
Burial Ground contains the tomb of the Kingdon family. Others buried there
include members of the Kennaways, Bowings, Treadwins, Merivales, and
Bowrings. It is now being refurbished by the Exeter Dissenters Graveyard Trust (see www.edgt.org.uk) with financial
assistance from Exeter Civic Society, Devon Gardens Trust, the heritage lottery
fund, Exeter Historic Buildings Trust and others.
Sidmouth Unitarians
In the Regency period, the
Sidmouth Meeting House congregation and their Minister, the Reverend Edmund
Butcher, author of Sidmouth’s first guide book, joined the Unitarian church,
whose local members over the next
hundred years included the Carslake family and the Lockyers, and the nationally
renowned suffragist Annie Leigh-Browne who, with her partner Mary Kilgour,
achieved the 1907 Act permitting women to be represented in local government.
Their philanthropic work for the town included the Byes, the Victoria Hospital
and Woolcombe House. Later ministers included the Reverend William Heineken,
mentor and fellow-investigator to Peter Orlando Hutchinson the Sidmouth
antiquarian and chronicler, and Sidmouth’s first woman minister Constance
Harris, who was appointed in 1931, by which time the Unitarian church had
become a centre for the socialist movement in the valley. (See www.unitarian.org.uk)
Though the congregation
for Sunday worship has now dwindled, the Sidmouth Unitarian church remains open to ideas from different traditions
and continues to offer people varied opportunities
to pursue their own path, free from dogma and imposed creeds. The restored
memorial garden, 15 metres above sea level, points the way to another three
centuries of work for creativity, compassion, peace and social justice, at “the
centre of Sidmouth”.
Unitarians
Unitarian Chapel in the Garden, Bridport
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment