Centenary of St Benedict’s Church, Gillingham, Dorset,
24 November 2007 – Dom Aidan Bellenger
In dioceses today, with the ease of transport for many and the shortage of priests,
‘big is beautiful, and the small congregation threatened with extinction. Today, we celebrate the centenary of this church of St Benedict at Gillingham certainly not ‘big’, but as certainly beautiful. The patchwork of parishes which make up the present pattern of the English Catholic Church owes its shape to the inspiration of individual initiatives and generous patronage. It is about small centres of faith building up the big picture. Bringing the Mass to the people has always been the inspiration of the foundation of local Catholic communities.
This part of the country with its historic missions at Bonham and Marnhull has rarely been without the Mass, the Sacraments, or a priest since the Reformation. The
Stourton and Hussey families, alongside their humbler and no-less heroic fellow
Catholics, risked much for their faith and suffered social and economic penalties. It was Major Bertram Edmund Freame of the Chantry, Gillingham, whose mother was a Hussey, who decided to offer one of his properties, a cottage near Rolls Bridge, as a chapel for the Gillingham Catholics. It was here, on 24 November 1907, that the
Mass was offered by the Abbé Alexandre Dodard of Marnhull for the opening of the new church of St Benedict, the event we celebrate today.
Thomas Matthews, formerly chaplain to Portland Prison, had rented Pierston House at Milton-on-Stour and had fitted up a room as a temporary chapel for the Catholics of the Gillingham area in 1900, an initiative which lasted until 1907 when Major
Freame’s new chapel entered the picture. Father Matthews continued to assist the monks resident at Bonham while Father Dodard who drove over from Marnhull, in one of his legendary cars, was the first parish priest of Gillingham. The churches at
Gillingham and Marnhull are now formerly linked but between 1925 and 1946 seven priests lived at Gillingham as resident priest and as chaplain to the Carmelite nuns who lived at the Chantry, the Freame’s residence, in those years. Bertram Freame, an only child, died unmarried and childless.
The original 1907 church, with its thatched roof, was burnt out in 1929, and rebuilt.
It was augmented in size after that disaster and transformed again in the early
1970’s. The church rarely stands still for long. The next hundred years, I am sure, will witness much that is unexpected and much, too, I hope that would fill the present congregation with joy.
St Benedict, the patron of this church, is an appropriate saint for the church. Major
Freame, born in 1857, had been educated by the Benedictines at Downside and was a near contemporary to several monks including Cardinal Gasquet. The Benedictine presence in these parts is very well established most notably with the great abbey of
Shaftesbury and the long-time residence of the English Benedictines at Bonham.
More importantly, St Benedict, the sixth century patriarch of monasticism in the
West, offers insights, reflections on the living out of the Gospel, which ring as true today as they did in the world of late antiquity.

Benedict’s disciples were called to a life in which obedience, humility and daily conversion underpinned a community based on shared values and prayer. The most characteristic of the Benedictine vows is perhaps stability and it is stability which sustains any community which is strong enough in its faith and commitment to survive a hundred years. We rejoice today in the stability and prayerfulness of this congregation and give thanks to all those who over the last century have contributed so much to this church of St Benedict at Gillingham so that ‘in all things God can be glorified’.
St Benedict’s Church, Gillingham, Dorset
24 th November 2007