kingston pitney chapel

kingston pitney chapel

Higher Kingston

 

The chapel which formerly existed at Kingston Pitney, sometimes referred to as Kingston-juxta-Yeovil, was described in the time of Edward III (1327-1377) as a chapel in the parish of Yeovil. It stood within the manorial buildings of Kingston and the site of it was a yard in Higher Kingston opposite the entrance to the old Yeovil Hospital and Nursing Home, the latter being the most recent manor house.

In 1501 a deed referred to the church “Demise by Sir John de Risyngdon, parson of the church of Ievele (Yeovil), and Sir Robert de Sambourne, chaplain, and Sir William Umfray, parson of the church of Kyngeston, to William Wodeforde, clerk, of a chamber with the Oratory, of a house covered with straw and used as a cattle shed and stable, and a curtilage and land in Ievele." The chapel was reported to be in ruins in 1547.

The Manor of Kingston, together with the advowson of Kingston Pitney Chapel, was purchased from Lord Stourton in 1710 by John Prowse. His grandson, George Bragg Prowse, may have been the builder of Kingston Manor House, an early Georgian house of two storeys and six bays with a Tuscan porch.

In 1856 Daniel Vickery wrote "In that part of Kingston, which is now called Kingston-street, stood the chapel to which the present sinecure rectory of Kingston, alias Pitney, is annexed, and where the rector reads prayers after institution. In the 22nd of Elizabeth, John Lord Stourton held the advowson of the chapel at Kingston-juxta-Yeovil. It has now a glebe of about thirty acres, and the tithes arising from land to the amount of 515 acres. Captain Prowse, who is Lord of the Manor of Kingston, is one of the patrons, jointly with George Harbin, Esq."

The chapel had a rector even after the chapel was demolished but it was just a sinecure. The living of Yeovil is still officially called Yeovil with Kingston Pitney having been united with the sinecure rectory in 1936.

 

map

 

This map, based on the 1886 Ordnance Survey, shows Higher Kingston running diagonally across the top of the map with Kingston Manor House located at top centre and the site of the Chapel marked above it on the other side of Higher Kingston.

 

gallery

 


Looking east along Higher Kingston around 1965, Yeovil General Hospital (part of which is the former Kingston Manor House) is on the right. At left the old glove factory is being demolished. Between the glove factory and the wall the man is walking past was the site of the former Kingston Pitney Chapel.

 

The entrance to Yeovil General Hospital in Higher Kingston, seen from the yard of the old glove factory being dismantled in the photograph above. The photographer would have been standing on the site of the former Kingston Pitney Chapel.