This church is a bit of an oddity. Gilbert Wall Heathcote
was the incumbent between 1835 and 1884, a sound Tractarian who had been vicar
of Hursley before John Keble, and paid for the rebuilding and extension of St
Peter’s in 1863, but the church never advanced very far liturgically and didn’t
feature in any of the Anglo-Catholic church directories. Yet it now has a
number of features which you’d expect to find in those settings, and nowhere
else.
The marble and mosaic reredos has the brutal vigour of the
period before church architecture and fittings began to become correct and
tasteful. There is a chancel screen which must be rather later than the 1863
rebuilding, but of a different date from the choir stalls as it’s in a
different style. The old chancel became, eventually, a Lady Chapel which now
has a couple of icons and a slender little statue. There’s a figure of the
Christ Child installed in 1938 as a memorial to AM Lichfold – whoever they were
– and a set of Stations of the Cross put in about 15 years ago at the cost of a
parishioner. All of this points in quite a Catholic direction but there is no
suggestion that here it’s seen as part of anything of that kind. I was allowed
to look at the vestments and found a set exactly the same as one we use in
Swanvale Halt, with the exception that the main colour of the orphreys is red
on ours.
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