SEABOROUGH
St. John
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Seaborough was recorded in Domesday Book under its Anglo-Saxon name Seveberge. When the change occurred is not known.
The hamlet has had a church since 1244 as the names of its incumbents can be traced to then. There has been a church on the present site since 1414/15 when John Golde, a local landowner gave by licence from Henry V a parcel of land ("one hundred feet in length by sixty feet in breadth") to Parson John Threver, the Incumbent then, for "the building of a new church thereon." Exactly where the previous church was located is not known.
The present church was enlarged, re-roofed and re-seated in 1882 when the chancel was added. ( to a design by Crickmay of Weymouth) The Transept, built in 1729, stands on C16 foundations. The segment on the North window-sill of the Transept is the head of a small column with typical C12 chevron mouldings which was later converted for use as a piscina with drain. This would almost certainly have been the piscina used in the church from 1415 until the 1882 enlargement when a new one was taken into use. The entire building was re-roofed last in 1988; the Bell-cot being strengthened and repaired at the same time.
The Church contains an early, mutilated stone Effigy of a C13 crusader almost certainly that of John Golde or Gole, a local man, who during the reign of Henry III, fulfilled an ancient, enduring commitment placed on the original Norman knight (Le Sieur de Vaus), when granted land at Seaborough, to provide the Sovereign with one soldier in time of war. Having been ordered by his master two centuries later to discharge it, John Golde duly fought in the 5th Crusade to the Holy Land and distinguished himself at the Siege of Damietta in 1219. After he returned to Seaborough he was presented with an estate there in 1229 by Ralph de Vallibus - a descendant of Le Sieur de Vaus.
The Bust in the Transept next to the Effigy is of Adam Martin of Seaborough House which had been built by one of his forebears in 1519. The old house was destroyed by fire in 1877 after which Seaborough Court was built on higher ground to the North. The Martin Bust is thought to have been originally sited in a niche in the West-wall above the railed-in unmarked flat tombstone outside the main door. The octagonal Ham stone Font, standing on a stem of corresponding design at the West-end of the Nave, is of C15 origin and was almost certainly that used by Parson John Threver when the church was first built on the site in 1414/15.
One of the two bells housed in the Bell-cot was presented to the Parish by Faithful (Fidelis) Aish in 1711 when he was the Incumbent. The Altar Window is dedicated to the glory of God and is in memory of John Batley (1891) and his wife, Maria Louisa (1899), of Seaborough Court. The Church owns a rare Elisabeth I silver communion cup fashioned by John Ions (Jones) of Exeter bearing the assay mark 1591 and is one of the earliest registered by him. A brass plate on the side of the Pulpit is in memory of Major Ralph Cecil Batley (Dorset Imperial Yeomanry) who fought in the South African War of 1900/01 and who subsequently did much to care for the little church during his time.
The origin and authority for the Church's accreditation to "St John" is unknown but was in use prior to 1944. The Church now holds a service based on the Book of Common Prayer, once a fortnight for a steadily shrinking congregation, however, it is usually filled to capacity for its annual Christmas Eve Service of Lessons and Carols.
The Dorset Historic Churches Trust gratefully acknowledges the above contribution prepared by Major General P. H. Benson
