Catalogue description LITTLEHAMPTON, ST. JOHN

Church of England, Littlehampton, St John's Parish, West Sussex

Deposited by the incumbent in April 1971 and June 1984

St. John's church was set up in 1877 as a result of the extreme Tractarianism of the Revd. Charles Rumball, then vicar of Littlehampton parish church. Its position was unusual: St. John's lay in the ecclesiastical parish of St. Mary's but was neither a daughter church nor a proprietary chapel. It was in fact simply a place where the parishioners of Littlehampton could be provided with a low church alternative to the high church services of St. Mary's. It was closed in 1948

The first minister-in-charge, the Rev. Arthur Steinkopff Thompson, was the author of Home Words for Wanderers, and Sermons Preached Abroad to English Worshippers; the second minister, The Rev. Olinthus John Vignoles, was the author of The Total Eclipse of the Sun in Spain (1860), A Summer Tour of Northern Europe, and A Ride through Bosnia; a later minister (1886), was the compiler and editor of Hymnal Songs of the Church