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St Bartholomew's Church,
Church Road (A420),
Wick, Abson, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Church has (or had) a graveyard.

Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in 1850, and we understand it is still open.

Kelly's Directory of 1923 records that Wick is on the Bath and Bristol road, and "in a beautiful and romantic valley through which runs the river Boyd", 2½ miles east-by-south from Warmley station on the Bath extension of the Midland railway, 7 east from Bristol, 6 north from Bath and 7 south from Chipping Sodbury. The church of St Bartholomew, consecrated in April 1850, is "an edifice of freestone, with Bath stone dressings, in the Early English style" designed by William Butterfield esq. F.S.A. architect, and consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an unfinished western tower containing 2 bells. The choir screen, stalls and pulpit are of oak. There are 340 sittings. The parish records date from 1880. The living was then a vicarage, in the gift of Simeon's Trustees, and held since 1918 by the Rev. Richard Percy Long M.A. of Selwyn College, Cambridge.

Wick became a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1880. At the time of the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/331/2/2/4) it was described as "Wick Chapel of Ease, St Bartholomew". The return was completed by Thomas Coney, Curate of Wick & Abson, who lived at "Pucklechurch Vicarage, Bristol". He remarked that "the parish church of Abson being at so great a distance from the bulk of the population, a new church was needed". It was erected "by voluntary contributions & by a private benefaction", but he declined to provide an account of the numbers attending church services ""it being considered that only very partial information can possibly be obtained by replying to the other questions in this form, the blanks are not filled in".

Kelly's Directory may suggest the reason for this change in population - "extensive color mines, employing about 150 hands, owned by The Golden Valley Ochre and Oxide Co. Ltd." The most remarkable objects in this parish are the rocks, lining each side of a deep glen, about a mile in length, and rising in some places to about 200 feet in height. A beautiful sparry substance, found in many places on these rocks, is known as "rock (or Bristol) diamond".

On the summit of the northern cliff is a Roman camp of oblong form, defended on three sides by a broad ditch and double vallum and containing about 12 acres of land. In a field near Tracy Park are two large stones, about five feet high, said to be the remains of Druidical monuments erected to British chiefs.

Denomination

Now or formerly Church of England.

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Church is located at OS grid reference ST6963972754. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

• St Bartholomew's Church, Wick, Abson shown on a Google Map.
• Places of Worship in Abson shown on a Google Map.
• Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
• Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
• Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
• OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
• A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
• www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)