Cathedrals, abbeys and churches of England and Wales : descriptive, historical, pictorial . dark firs. are fragrant all the year round, was, in ancient times, a manor granted to the monks of AVestminster, and by them held for generations; and the original charter of Edward the Confessor proves that there was an Eversley Cluirch even at that period. When Kingsley became pastor, in 1842, of this sparsely inhabited wild, it was in a deplorable condition. The services of the church had been for many years utterly neglected, and the young curate had at first to work upon the most unpromising ma-ter
Cathedrals, abbeys and churches of England and Wales : descriptive, historical, pictorial . dark firs. are fragrant all the year round, was, in ancient times, a manor granted to the monks of AVestminster, and by them held for generations; and the original charter of Edward the Confessor proves that there was an Eversley Cluirch even at that period. When Kingsley became pastor, in 1842, of this sparsely inhabited wild, it was in a deplorable condition. The services of the church had been for many years utterly neglected, and the young curate had at first to work upon the most unpromising ma-terial. He found sheep feeding at largo in the churchyard; and Holy Communion was celebrated only three times a year. The husbandman to bring this rough ground into tillage now, however, appeared on the scene. Kingsley was born in 1819, under the open brow of Dartmoor. As a lad he revelled in the scenery of the Fens, and afterwards, at fair Clovelly, imbibed the impressions turned to such telling account in • West-ward Ho! At the age of twenty-three he settled down at Eversley under the. KINUSLKV S GKAVE. 306 ABBEYS AND CHURCHES. [Selborne ^d depressing circumstances above narrated. He faced all tlie difficulties with manlyresolution, and, by the time he received his appointment as rector, a healthysystem of progress had been established. Amidst all the occupations of a busy lifehe remained, as he began, a model hard-working parish priest, faithful to hisvillage church, with its prosaic red tower and corner turrets. Amongst the hard-riding farmers and plodding j^easants he became all things to all men. As aparagraph in the Memories, edited by his widow, puts it, he could swing a flail?with the threshers in the barn, turn his swathe with the mowers in the meadow,pitch hay with the haymakers in the pastirre; and he knew every fox-earth onthe moor, the reedy hover of the pike, and the still hole where the chub lay. The comjDarison already suggested between the jmrson of Selborne an
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Keywords: ., book, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectchurchbuildings
