Aldershot Religion

Although it's in Hampshire, Aldershot is part of the Guildford Diocese so I went to look at its churches a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't get into Holy Trinity, the evangelical church in the town centre, but it seems to have the usual sort of decor one would expect for a building of its nature and history. The other three Anglican churches have a Catholic tradition - but how long for is a significant question.

The old parish church is St Michael's, hugely expanded in the late 19th century to fit the requirements of a growing town. I wasn't prepared for the interior (sorry for the blurry photograph), with its chancel screen, Stations of the Cross, statues and reserved sacrament. St Michael's has acquired all the paraphernalia of Anglo-Catholicism, the last item being a statue of the Archangel himself in the 1980s, including a massive curtained English altar (unusually, with saints topping the riddel-posts instead of angels), but it isn't clear it's using any of them. Its current incumbent is certainly a moderate evangelical and it's definitely moving away from the sort of worship its fittings imply.

Further along, the Church of the Ascension was very specifically built as an Anglo-Catholic establishment in the 1930s. It reminds me a bit of the church I used to worship at back in High Wycombe, 
and while it lacks SS Mary & George's monumental presence it does aim at that sort of wide-open monumentality with its white walls and barrel-vault roof. Unfortunately the building is not at all sound and unless something very dramatic happens its days are numbered. I've seldom seen anything as splendid as the little altar under the tabernacle in the side chapel, but that space is a bit of a mess otherwise.

Finally, St Augustine's sits on a corner plot in the northern estates of the town. Built in the early 1900s, this barn-like church also had a Catholic tradition from the start though possibly not as spiky as it later became. It's beautiful, clean and immaculate though I suspect nothing less than a labour of love by its current incumbent who I met and spoke to. Replete with shrines and statuary, this is proper Anglo-Catholicism and it's no surprise that it's now one of only two Guildford Diocese churches under alternative episcopal oversight. the east end was re-ordered in the mid-1990s, and very unusually the old altar was cut in half to form a narrow shelf on which sit the tabernacle and the Big Six flanking it. Fr Keith told me he is moving swiftly towards retirement and has for a long time done most of the work around St Augustine's - he doesn't have a parish office or a treasurer - and I wonder what will become of it after his faithful ministry does come to an end.