Former Church of the Holy Rood (Now Redundant)

Holy Rood Church at Coombe Keynes, a tiny village in the Purbeck countryside of Dorset, is a former Church of England church with a thirteenth-century tower and a story that runs from medieval prosperity through Victorian rescue to redundancy — and then to an unusual second rescue, this time by the villagers themselves. Grade II listed, it has been in the care of a local charitable trust since 1980.

The original Holy Rood was an Early English church of nave, chancel, south aisle, north porch and west tower, but by the mid-nineteenth century it had fallen into a pitiable state — damp, ivy-grown, its three bells dumped in the disused south aisle among the broken stocks and wheels that had once hung them, the aisle itself stripped of floor and seating. The diocesan architect's report of 1858 pulled no punches: "I have never seen a sadder case than this of ecclesiastical dilapidation and difficulty. A portion of the church is a complete ruin and the rest little better." The building was judged unfit for use and a danger to minister and congregation alike. A committee formed around 1858 by the rural dean, Prebendary Bond, found full restoration too costly and opted instead for rebuilding, in which cause the new vicar, the Rev F. Newington, threw himself on his arrival in 1860. Joseph Weld, lord of the manor and chief landowner, asked that the old tower be kept.

The new church was designed by John Hicks of Dorchester — the architect to whom the young Thomas Hardy was articled — to seat 100 adults and 24 children in place of the old 80 sittings, with 102 seats free and unappropriated for a parish of more than 150 souls. The estimated £650 cost was beyond the largely poor parish, so subscriptions were sought from afar: £427 came from clergy and gentry of the surrounding area, £100 from a church rate paid by just eight ratepayers, £50 each from the Salisbury Diocesan Church Building Association and the Incorporated Society, and £35 in voluntary gifts — £662 in all. The builder John Wellspring of Dorchester began work in 1860, rebuilding everything except the tower while salvaging what he could: several old windows were reinserted, and the westernmost arch of the arcade that had divided nave from south aisle was cleaned, restored and re-set as the chancel arch, where the thirteenth-century stones still stand. The floor was raised and the ground on the south side cleared to defeat the old damp; the tower gained buttresses and a pyramidal roof, and its three bells were rehung. The Bishop of Salisbury, Walter Kerr Hamilton, consecrated the rebuilt church on 24 August 1861.

The building is of carstone, limestone rubble and knapped flint with limestone dressings under stone slate roofs, comprising nave, chancel, north porch and the two-stage thirteenth-century west tower with a vestry in its base. The lancet windows are in thirteenth-century style, the floors largely of Purbeck stone with Poole tiles in the sacrarium, and the pine roof rises on arch-braced trusses from stone corbels. The nave preserves a remarkable run of eighteenth-century floor slabs to the Serrell, Allner, Bewnel, Joyce and Robinson families, dated between 1719 and 1787. The thirteenth-century font of the old church was repaired and retained, and the Bath stone pulpit, communion table, prayer desk and lectern were all fittings of 1860–61. The Newingtons left their personal mark: the vicar and his wife produced illuminated scrolls for the church, Mrs Newington made the altar drapery and cushions, and the vicar himself painted the glass in the two small chancel windows — vandalised in 1975, their remnants now kept by the vicar of Wool.

The church's greatest treasure was its chalice: a rare English silver parcel-gilt chalice of about 1500, with rounded bowl, hexagonal stem, knop and flared base, thought to have come from nearby Bindon Abbey at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Loaned to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1930 with a replica taking its place, it has since been returned to the parochial church council of Wool and East Stoke and is now on loan to the Dorset Museum — which also holds the church's three historic bells, the earliest cast by Thomas Hey in 1350, the others by John Wallis (1599) and Anthony Bond (1636).

Decline returned in the twentieth century. By about 1966 the walls were "green with damp, and the plaster... falling from the roof", and services in the early 1970s sometimes drew only a handful of worshippers. Holy Rood at Wool became the area's parish church in 1967, and the Coombe Keynes church was declared redundant on 15 January 1974. But the villagers refused to let it go: a fundraising committee formed in 1978 led to the creation of the Coombe Keynes Trust in 1980, presided over by Sir Joseph William Weld — descendant of the Victorian patron — to promote the church's restoration and permanent preservation. On 28 July 1980 the Church Commissioners sold the building (without its churchyard) to the Trust for a nominal sum, and it now serves as a function space for residents and members — the village's oldest building, saved twice over by the people it was built for.