Introduction

Little opposition prevented the Reverend A. M. Bennett from achieving early success at expanding the size of Bournemouth’s St Peter’s church. Later attempts to extend an ecclesiastic presence within the resort’s social fabric did not have such a smooth run.

Zeal for the Lord

Energetic support for the church building

Reverend Bennett, taking up his charge just after the new church’s construction, lost little time in championing the need to enlarge the building in order to accommodate its growing flock. He applied energy to its fund-raising. In one sermon he referred to ‘the duties of members of the establishment to promote the interests of the Church as far as lay in their power’, donating funds no doubt part of this. During the ceremonies to celebrate laying the new cornerstone, he played a central role, leading two services in the church. Ending the day chairing a tea party for a 100 people gave him the chance for a further address. At a tea party held to commemorate the anniversary of enlarging the church, Reverend Bennett received acclaim not just for his role in the fund-raising but also ‘for his constant and zealous attention to his pastoral duties’. Little opposition thus far.

Establishing religious leadership in the community

Bennett gave a ‘most impressively read’ burial service for Mrs Tregonwell. He featured in meetings held to promote church affairs. These included the Propagation of the Gospel abroad and to increase the number of curates employed. Perhaps his influence even reached into the celebrations held to accompany the new Sanatorium’s opening. Attendees proceeded around the building chanting psalms. Awarded a central role at a dinner to celebrate the end of the Crimean War, he praised Florence Nightingale. Strong support for the development of schools offered him a way to secure his church’s future. He encouraged the establishment of schools at Moordown as well perhaps in the Boscombe and Pokesdown area. He gave prizes at the British National School, but only after his ‘rigorous examination’ of the candidates. Children and the aristocracy perhaps offered him little opposition but others had reservations about their perpetual curate.

The worm turns

Not in my backyard

In 1854, talk ran of founding a Mechanics’ Institute in Bournemouth. Donations occurred. Mechanics’ Institutes aimed to deepen working people’s technical education, increasing employment chances. Bennett may have seen this initiative as providing a little opposition to his influence amongst the manual workers. He ran a lecture series of his own for them. The fifth concerned Australia. He appears to have given a long and detailed lecture about the country. A highlight glossed the population as ‘shepherds’: anybody from ‘a lawyer’s clerk, a broken-down gentleman, a Jew, and a London tailor’. While this sample suggests that the Reverend Bennett may have lacked the common touch, he nevertheless appears to have succeeded in repelling boarders, at least for a while. By early 1855, the Mechanics’ Institute idea seems to have fallen victim to the workings of ‘one party [who] wished to push upon the other their views on religious matters’.

High Church practices not for all

Early in 1853 a letter to the press railed about ‘Priest Bennett’, the ‘Bournemouth Tractarian’. The writer also denounced Bennett as a ‘Puseyite’, speaking of ‘priestly bigotry and intolerance’. As part of this, the churchman looked ‘upon Nonconformity as one of the most unpardonable of crimes’. It seems that Bennett had refused to allow the bodies of a dead Dissenting couple – well known to him – to receive a blessing in his church before burial at the Independent Chapel. The ancient pair died in quick succession. For the first, a delegated curate prevented entry, but Bennett did the job himself the second time. Bennett tried for an opportunistic conversion, despite the deceased’s 60 years as an Independent worshipper: ‘the agent in this precious business being a young lady in the parish’. The Bishop of Winchester provided little opposition to his actions, others more.

Church ­and State: c’est moi

During the period leading up to the Improvement Bill’s passage, to simplify matters, a suggestion may have occurred to equate the Commission’s boundaries with the ‘ecclesiastical district of St. Peter’, Bournemouth’s single established church at the time. This triggered angry response in the press. Towards the end of November, 1855, a letter signed ‘Enquirer’ appeared in the Poole & Dorset Herald. The writer, a supporter of central building control, observed that boundary measures understood by ‘ordinary mortals’ should replace those using the ecclesiastical borders. Soon after, ‘Common Sense’ wrote in vituperative support. ‘I look with great jealousy to the power of persons ‘Ecclesiastical’. I see no opportunity lost in giving themselves undue importance. Let them be kept out of matters secular.’ Administrative convenience, it seems, meant little in the face of such a naked grab for power by the Reverend Bennett. In this case, he provoked more than a little opposition.

An increasing number of complex challenges

For much of the late 1840s Reverend Bennett had concentrated on raising money with which to enlarge St Peter’s, a job completed. A personal catastrophe then occurred. His second wife and his daughter died. His professional world faced more challenges as well. Bournemouth’s residents and visitors increased, putting pressure on the infrastructure, civil and ecclesiastic. Greater numbers meant a demand for wider choice: Congregationalists, Independents and Presbyterians. As the fires grew, he needed to stamp harder. He would bar a funeral procession from entering St Peter’s (‘his church’) if necessary. The sharpness of tone for both published correspondences – denying non-Conformists, conflating civil and ecclesiastic borders – suggests that no little opposition to the Reverend Bennett smouldered under the turf. Once a process of getting the affluent residents and visitors to make donations, management of the changing ecclesiastical and social terrain perhaps needed a multi-variate approach.

Takeaway

Writing with the benefit of hindsight, Charles Mate observed that, as a result of the ‘chaotic’ building development, the situation by the 1850s had ‘got quite out of hand’. In the opinion of some, the same might have applied to the activities of the Reverend Alexander Morden Bennett during the settlement’s early period. His status as perpetual curate, however, provided him with good security of tenure.

See also this about Reverend Bennett.

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