Church of St Giles, Wimborne St Giles

The Church of St Giles is the parish church of the village of Wimborne St Giles, in the beautiful Cranborne Chase country of Dorset. A church of medieval origin, rebuilt several times over the centuries, it is today a remarkable mixture of Georgian and Gothic Revival architecture, and is celebrated above all for the magnificent interior created by the great church artist Sir Ninian Comper — described by Sir John Betjeman as "a treasure-house of Comper work". Standing at the entrance to St Giles House, the seat of the Earls of Shaftesbury, and at the end of a row of Stuart almshouses, it is one of the most rewarding churches in Dorset, a Grade I listed building of great beauty.

The first rector of Wimborne St Giles, John de Fissa, is recorded in 1207, and a church stood on the site by 1291. This medieval parish church was rebuilt in the 1620s under the patronage of Sir Anthony Ashley, 1st Baronet of Wimborne St Giles — the ancestor of the Ashley-Cooper family, the Earls of Shaftesbury, whose great house stands beside the church. Sir Anthony died in 1628 and was buried in a spectacular monument in the church, which survives to this day. The church was rebuilt again in 1732 by the Dorset architects John and William Bastard, the brothers who, after a catastrophic fire destroyed the town of Blandford Forum in 1731, rebuilt almost the entire town and its parish church; the church at Wimborne St Giles, built at the same time, shares the elegant Early Georgian style of their work at Blandford, with a tower, nave and south porch.

The church's greatest glory, however, came in the twentieth century. After a fire damaged the building in 1908, the church was restored between 1908 and 1910 by Sir Ninian Comper, one of the most gifted ecclesiastical artists of his age. Comper transformed the interior into a sumptuous and harmonious whole, filling it with his characteristic work — a gilded rood screen, a richly coloured and gilded reredos, painted decoration, and glowing stained glass — creating one of the finest of all his interiors. It is this that has made St Giles famous among lovers of church art, and that earned Betjeman's praise.

The church is closely bound up with the Ashley-Cooper family. Among them was Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the great Victorian social reformer and philanthropist, who campaigned tirelessly for the poor, for factory workers and for chimney-sweeps' children, and who is buried in the churchyard at Wimborne St Giles — so that the church is the last resting place of one of the noblest figures of nineteenth-century England.

Today the Church of St Giles continues as an active Anglican parish church in the Diocese of Salisbury, serving the village of Wimborne St Giles. With its Georgian architecture, its Comper interior, its monuments and its associations with the Shaftesbury family, it is a place of real beauty and interest, drawing visitors who come to admire one of the loveliest church interiors in the country.

The church stands in the estate village of Wimborne St Giles, beside St Giles House in the Cranborne Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in north-east Dorset. The great house and park of the Earls of Shaftesbury lie all around, along with the Stuart almshouses beside the church, the village of Cranborne with its manor and gardens, the chalk downland and ancient woods of Cranborne Chase, the market town of Wimborne Minster with its great church, and the wider Dorset countryside, with the New Forest within easy reach.

From the medieval church of the thirteenth century, through the rebuildings under Sir Anthony Ashley in the 1620s and the Bastard brothers in 1732, the incomparable restoration by Sir Ninian Comper in 1908–10, and its association with the great reformer Lord Shaftesbury, the Church of St Giles gathers many centuries of Dorset history into one building. A Grade I listed church and "a treasure-house of Comper work", it remains the living parish church of Wimborne St Giles — one of the most beautiful churches in the county.