St Aubin on the Hill

From Jerripedia

The new church before the wall was demolished and trees felled to create a car park alongside

St Aubin on the Hill is an Anglican church in the Parish of Saint Brelade and is dedicated to Saint Aubin of Angers. Building of the present church began on 4 June 1889, with the laying of the foundation stone by the Bishop of Guildford. It was opened on 13 October 1892

Laying the foundation stone of the church

History

Saint Aubin was a busy port at least as far back as the 16th century, with its own harbour and Court House. In 1747 a church was built, the first to be erected in the island since the Reformation. This was the result of a petition to the Bishop of Winchester from the merchants of St Aubin in which they made their case for the erection of a chapel of ease, in which they mentioned the difficulty of travelling to St Brelade's Church, a distance of about two miles: "The road to the said Church is very difficult by reason of many rugged steep ascents and descents, and a great way of moving sands, and the said inhabitants are exposed to great fatigue by sheer scorching heat in the summer, and the storms of impetuous westerly winds which usually blows there in Winter …"

The original church was a square building which stood on the site of the present church car park. In 1888 it was pronounced unsafe. A meeting was held on 19 April 1889, and it was resolved that a committee be formed to collect funds and arrange the building of a new church. But, as the pictures in the gallery below reveal, plans had been drawn up for a new church as early as 1873, although they were not proceeded with.

The granite of the old building was reused and the £2,500 raised allowed extra columns, arches and windows in Mont Mado granite.

St Aubin on the Hill is very fine example of a Victorian Gothic Revival building. The small north window in the Lady Chapel is notable for being the only Pre-Raphaelite window in Jersey, created by the firm of William Morris from designs by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The church also has some beautiful stained glass windows by local artist Henry Thomas Bosdet.

There were no burials at St Aubin until the 1980s, when authority was granted by the Ecclesiastical Court of Jersey to allow the curate, the Reverend Robert Booth, to inter some ashes which had been sent for burial from England.