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Portrait of
a Parish - Page 13
Church of St. Michael and All Angels
An entry in the Domesday Book of 1086 states that "The Church
holds Cume", showing by the use of the Celtic word "Cume" or "Cwm"
that the origins of the settlement go back a long way. It was an
English, not a Norman king who gave the land to the Benedictine
monks who founded Bath Abbey.
The earliest church building of which we have any record,
dates from Norman times and the nearby dovecote gives evidence
of living quarters for the monks who came from the Abbey to
supervise and work in their domain, with the church as their
chapel. This small Norman building, with "a tower at the west
end holding two bells" lasted until the two rebuildings of the
19th Century, in 1814 and 1865. The two bells are still held in
the church, a plaque on the south wall refers to burials of the
Shute family from 1505, now covered over, and the memorial to
Katherine Bassett in the west wall of the south aisle was once
part of a large tomb of that family in Tudor times. The earliest
register of Births and Deaths, now held at the Somerset Record
Office, dates from 1593, and one of the Communion Chalices still
in use bears the date 1634. By the 20th Century the third church
to be erected on the site had been built by the Vicar, the
Reverend Francis Pocock, who also founded Monkton Combe School.
The boundaries of the ecclesiastical parish had already been
re-arranged to make a new parish up the hill on Combe Down, thus
pre-dating the division of the civil parish some hundred years
later. St. Michael's was served by two more Vicars in the first
half of the century before the long interregnum which followed
the death of the Reverend Percy Warrington in 1961.
The next eight or nine years were testing ones for the
reduced population of Monkton Combe, but the will to preserve
the integrity of the Church was there, and the final outcome was
the creation of a joint Benefice with Holy Trinity in Combe Down
and St. James in Southstoke, sharing the services of the
appointed Vicar and Curate of Combe Down, lay Readers and other
faithful Priests. The churchyard serves Combe Down as well as
Monkton.
This happy arrangement ha enabled a congregation, whose
numbers, compared with the population of the village as a whole
are at or above the national average, to continue to worship in
the community to which it belongs. One Service a week is held
regularly, there is an active Youth wing, supported by senior
students from Monkton Combe School. For Carols by Candlelight on
Christmas Eve the church is full, and on the special occasions
of the Epiphany Play and Harvest Festival there have been
lunches to which the whole Parish was invited, limited only by
the capacity of the Village Hall in which they were held.
There is a monthly newsletter, delivered to every household
in the Parish, which carries village news as well as church
affairs. The clock has been restored to chime the daytime hours
and the bells are rung for services each week, as well as on
national occasions. Many people will remember the peal which
ushered in the Millennium Year of 2000 AD.
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