St Mark the Evangelist Church, Upper Hale, Farnham

St Mark the Evangelist Church is a Church of England parish church in Upper Hale, on the northern edge of the town of Farnham in Surrey. A modest but charming red-brick church, fair-faced inside and out, with an aisle-less nave and a small chancel, it was built in the late Victorian period to serve a poor and growing district, and it holds some unexpected treasures: a Tudor altar far older than the church itself, a beloved organ affectionately named "Emily", and a remarkable set of original wall paintings by a local artist. Listed at Grade II since 2021, St Mark's is a building whose unassuming exterior conceals a wealth of history and devotion.

The church owes its origins to a touching social concern. St Mark's was built as a daughter church to St John the Evangelist at Hale, largely through the efforts of the Vicar of Hale, John Powell, and many of his parishioners. The problem the church was built to solve was a very particular one: the families in the larger houses of Hale worshipped at St John's, but their servants could not attend, because they were at work during the service times — and St John's stood at the southernmost edge of the parish, too far for the servants to walk through the dark to reach. The vicar therefore began holding services for the servants at the local school, and when that congregation had grown large it became clear that a new church was needed. According to tradition, the local people themselves collected flints from the common to help build the walls — a labour of love that bound the new church to its community from the very start.

St Mark's was dedicated by Harold Browne, the Bishop of Winchester, on 14 July 1883 — the eve of St Swithun's Day — with the first communion celebrated the following day; in memory of this, the church's Centenary Window depicts St Swithun. A newspaper report of the time described the new building as standing in "a very poor and populous part of the parish of Hale", where the existing provision had long been "totally inadequate to the requirements of the district". The church was, in effect, a mission church for the working people of Upper Hale, and that spirit of service to the ordinary people of the parish has remained part of its character ever since.

For all its humble origins, St Mark's possesses some remarkable furnishings. Its altar is far older than the church itself: Tudor in style, it bears the inscription "GIVEN BI HENRIE LVNNE 1608", dating it to 275 years before St Mark's was built. It is believed to have come from St Andrew's Church, the parish church of Farnham, for a report in the Surrey Advertiser of December 1880 records that the ladies of Farnham had presented a new altar to their parish church, and that the old altar and altar cloth had been accepted by the Vicar of Hale "for the use of a church which it is intended to begin next year at Hale Common". Thus a Jacobean altar of 1608 found a second home in the Victorian church.

The church's organ has its own story and its own name. At first the singing was accompanied only by a harmonium, but thanks to a legacy from a local woman, Emily Mangles, a pipe organ was installed on All Saints' Day in 1912. Built by Samuel Frederick Dalladay of Hastings, it is a good and early example of his smaller instruments — well built and tonally pleasant — and, though later worked on by the organ-builder George Osmond, it remains a largely authentic instrument. In honour of its benefactor it is affectionately known to this day as "Emily".

The greatest artistic treasure of St Mark's, however, is its set of wall paintings. The sanctuary is adorned with a scheme of murals executed between about 1911 and 1920 by a local artist, Kitty Milroy, whose idiosyncratic and accomplished work illustrates the Annunciation and the Benedicite — the great canticle of praise in which all creation blesses the Lord. Milroy's paintings are considered exceptional, both for their quality and for their rarity as a complete original decorative scheme by a woman artist of the early twentieth century, and they give the small chancel of St Mark's a beauty and richness out of all proportion to the modesty of the building. Together with the Tudor altar and the organ "Emily", they make St Mark's a place of real interest and charm.

St Mark's stands in Upper Hale, on the northern side of Farnham, a handsome Georgian market town in the far west of Surrey, close to the Hampshire border. Farnham itself, with its great medieval and Tudor castle — long a residence of the Bishops of Winchester — its elegant Georgian streets and its museum, lies a short distance to the south. The surrounding country includes the heaths and woods around Farnham, the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the North Downs Way, and the wider Wey valley, with the historic towns of Aldershot and Guildford within easy reach.

From its building in 1883 to serve the servants and working people of Upper Hale, with flints gathered from the common, through its Jacobean altar of 1608, the organ "Emily" given in 1912, and the exquisite wall paintings of Kitty Milroy, St Mark the Evangelist Church gathers a wealth of history and artistry into one small red-brick building. A Grade II listed church still serving its community in the Diocese of Guildford, it remains a living and much-loved parish church — a humble Victorian mission church made precious by the devotion and the treasures gathered within it.