Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above
and cometh down from the Father of lights
So wrote James in his General epistle, how appropriate to our story.
Having decided on a course of action it was now down to Colonel Charles Drew, the Parochial Church Council (PCC) secretary to try
and acquire some land on which to build the church. The ease with which it was obtained speaks volumes of times past and of a
less pressurized age. Can you, in your minds eye, visualise the green fields on which now stands St Marks, Winnards Close,
Oakland Walk and the other nearby streets? Can you erase the scar of the A347 - New Road - and think of Bournemouth as not part
of your immediate surrounds? Would your mind set be free of Development Plans? Can you envisage the possibililty of 1 acre of
land being given purely as a gift? Does the Church of England stir such generousity today? Times change and peoples priorities
change with them. Remember there was no National Health Service then and attendances at meetings of the Mothers Union were
recorded as so many Ladies and so many Women. We create our own times, we can only work to keep the best of the old and be
prepared to take on the best of the new.
So it was, as you can see from the transcripts below, that Charles Drew wrote and
asked for an acre of land and without any problem was given it.
 |
Canford Estate Office Towngate Street Poole Dear Sir, The recent Commission appointed by the Bishop of Salisbury, to enquire into the requirements of the Church in South East Dorset recommended that, in view of the increasing population, provision should be made for the site of a new church in the neighbourhood of Dudsbury. As this would affect both the parishes of West Parley & Hampreston the Archdeacon of Dorset the Venerable E J Bodington instructed the Rectors & Churchwardens of these parishes to take the necessary action. After careful consideration it was agreed the most suitable site would be on the East side of the New Road, about |
 |
North of Parley cross roads, where the road bends towards the N. W. I have been deputed to ask you if you will be so kind as to enquire if Lord Wimborne could see his way to give this site. It is considered that about 1 acre would be sufficient for the church, vicarage & church room. Yours faithfully Charles D Drew |
 |
Canford Estate Office Personal 31st December 1928 Dear Colonel Drew, With reference to your letter to me in connection with the Church site for Parley, I enclose a plan and have marked on it a suggested site of one acre with a red edging. Do you think this will meet the case? A week or two ago the Bishop wrote to Lord Wimborne with regard to the general scheme for East Dorset and asked him to give some contribution - the letter was sent down to me for report, and when I replied to his Lordship I told him what the position was with reference to this particular site, and that I hoped he would give it instead of making any cash contribution. I thought it well to let you know exactly what the position was, but only do this as a personal matter and not for you to mention officially. If you will kindly let me have the plan back within the next few days, I shall be glad, as I hope to go to London next week and to see Lord Wimborne. Yours truly T J Meaby |
 |
Canford Estate Office Personal 14th January 1929 Dear Colonel Drew, With further reference to your letter of the 18th December last, I have now had an opportunity of placing this matter before Lord Wimborne, and his Lordship instructs me to say that he will be very glad to give a site for Church purposes, and I enclose a tracing showing edged red the site his Lordship suggests might fit the case. Will you kindly go into the question, and let me hear from you again, and at the same time inform me to whom the property is to be transferred. Colonel C. D. Drew D.S.O. |
What excellent news this must have been to the All Saints PCC and Colonel Charles Drew in particular. But as is so often the case the Devil has inserted his mischief and the last innocent innocuous question of Mr Meaby's will echo down our story, which will be continued.
For those who have not noticed it, the telephone number of the Estates Office, 54 Poole and Dorset written as Dorsetshire speaks volumes of the times. As does the requirement to indent your paragraphs in a letter (this formatting not carried into the transcripts, we are servants of our age). Note also that a plan was sent to Charles Drew with a request it be returned, of course, no photocopiers. At this stage Colonel Drew did not possess a typewriter, or maybe did not like the new fangled gadget but it comes later on. See you there.
Go to Page 3
Go to Page 1
Footnote : Just in case this history is read by someone entirely from the computer, email and personal digital assistant era, we thought we would explain why the pictures of Drew's letters to Canford Estate look the way they do. It was common in those days for business and non personal correspondence written by individuals to organisations to be written using a "Duplicate Book". This is a bound notebook, usually of 100 pages numbered 1 to 100 in the top right hand corner and perforated so they could be easily removed. They were 105mm x 130mm and were ruled with feint blue lines to aid writing. They also came with a sheet of blue carbon paper, cut to the size of the book, as in addition to the page you wrote on, you used the carbon paper to take a copy of the letter on the second non perforated page (which is what you see in the image) that was underneath, there for that purpose. This was your copy. The book therefore had 200 leaves in total. Surprisingly you can still buy them, there is one in the office stationary catalogue here. (April 2006). ....errr if you don't know what carbon paper is, look it up.
© St Marks West Parley