Upper Itchen Benefice
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This Church, which is dedicated to St James the Great, was erected for Mr Henry Joyce Mulcock of Manor Farm House, Beauworth, in 1838 on land which he owned and which had once been part of a farmyard. The walls are rendered brick with stone dressing to the door and window openings. The roof is slated and there is at the West end an unusual three stage turret, housing a single bell and an interesting bird-cage clock (a second, smaller, bell having been removed in 1968). Designed along the lines of a Primitive Methodist Chapel of that period, the Church has a single cell nave and chancel, with a porch on the South side. There is a small gallery at the West end of the Church, reached by a winding staircase with a storage cupboard below. On the North side under the gallery is a small vestry. Although built in 1838, the site of the Church remained in the ownership of Mr Mulcock until 1 June 1841 and it was only on 4 August that year that the Church and Churchyard were consecrated. In the formal document requesting consecration Mr Mulcock and the Rector wrote that the population of Beauworth was then 152, of whom only 2 or 3 attended Church, and that the Church could seat 155! |
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| Since the building of the Church, the only significant changes to it and its fittings have been
Mr Mulcock died in 1875 and is buried (as is his sister) in the large chest tomb on the South side of the Church. Information concerning the Charitable Trust, which he established by his Will and which still continues, is contained in the framed document hanging on the vestry wall. |
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The East Window
The focal point of the window is the Cross, the supreme symbol and badge of the Christian faith. In the four quadrants of the Cross are the traditional symbols of the writers of the four Gospels. These symbols originated from the Book of Revelations, Chapter 4, Verses 6 – 8, which reads, “…..Round about the throne” (of God) “were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him….” The emblem of the “Divine Man” was assigned to St Matthew in ancient times, as his Gospel teaches us about the human nature of Christ. The winged lion, the symbol of St Mark, refers to his Gospel which tells us of the royal dignity of Christ. The symbol of the winged calf (or ox) is that of St Luke and refers to his Gospel, which emphasises the sacrificial aspect of Christ’s life. The eagle was believed to be the bird which flies the highest, and so symbolises St John ,, whose Gospel soars to the peaks of spiritual insight. The lower part of the central section of the window is a vista looking northwards across the parish from The Milbury’s towards Shorley and Durden Woods, with fields of ripening barley in the foreground. In the other sections are illustrated various building (including the Church) in the parish and a selection of crops and flora. Amongst the crops shown are wheat, maize, rape seed, potatoes and peas on the left-hand side and oats, wheat, beans and purple headed sanfoin (a clover-like crop formally used to feed cattle and grown extensively by Henry Mulcock, by whose munificence the Church was built) on the right-hand side. The window was a gift of the late Thomas James Duke, whose house (Greendowns) is amongst those illustrated in the window, whose profession as an agricultural seed merchant is reflected by the illustrations of crops and whose grave is in the Churchyard below the window. The Kneelers |
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The East window, which was dedicated on 5 November 1989 by the Rev. Ernest Simms M.A., B.D., Rector of Cheriton with Tichborne and Beauworth, is the work of Patrick Martin A.M.G.P. of Glass Mountain Studios, Birmingham. (photo by kind permission of Brian J Woodruffe).