St Kenelm's Church, Romsley, Worcestershire, Church History

Worcestershire Places of Worship

Other Places of Worship in this Area

Romsley, Romsley Methodist Church
(1.25m.)
Halesowen, St John the Baptist
(1.44m.)
Halesowen, St Margaret
(1.44m.)
Halesowen, Quinton Cemetery
(1.44m.)
Clent, St Leonard
(1.87m.)
Cradley, St John
(2.04m.)
Cradley, St Peter
(2.04m.)
Hagley, St John the Baptist
(2.19m.)
Pedmore, St Peter
(2.27m.)
Wollescote, Lye, Bethel Chapel
(2.36m.)
Lye, Lye Cemetery
(2.43m.)
Lye, Former Unitarian Chapel (now S-Store Limited)
(2.52m.)

Note: distances (in miles) are calculated as the crow flies; it may be further by road or on foot.

We have 1 Image

Above Photograph(s)
Copyright of Google Digitization

St Kenelm's Church, Romsley

St Kenelm's Church,
Chapel Lane, B62 0PH,
Romsley, Worcestershire.

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 after 812, and we understand it is still open.

St Kenelm's Church is a Grade I Listed Building - see British Listed Buildings website for details. Building of the present church began in the mid 12th century, on the site of an earlier religious settlement. Legend has it that a holy spring rose from the ground where the body of Kenelm, son of Kenulf, King of Mercia was discovered, after he was murdered by his sister about 812, over which a shrine was built.
The existing tower dates from the 15th century, but according to Mike Salter's The Old Parish Churches of Worcestershire (1995), the western part of the church is actually the base of a tower begun in 1180-90. "The south doorway of c.1150 has two orders of columns and a tympanum showing Christ seated and crowned with angels holding his glory".
Our own illustration of the Church (incorrectly labelled as "Clent Church") is taken from the book Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley, by Emma Dent (1877), digitized by Google and available from their Text Archive. Mrs Dent mentions it in conjunction with the foundation of a chapel dedicated to St Kenelm on Sudeley Hill, Winchcombe, similarly on the site of a former Holy Well. Like the small village called Kenelmstowe, which came into being around the site of the discovery of Kenelm's body, it too became a site of pilgrimage.
Whether the legend is true or not, it seems inescapable that pilgrimages were "big business" in medieval times, and many sites such as Kenelmstowe, which had sprung up to serve them went into decline after the Reformation, as did St Kenelm's Church. According to Mrs Dent, it was restored in 1848 by the Lyttelton family, and was made the parish church of a township in the parish of Halesowen. Before this it had been a private chapel.
See the article The Crown and the Well on the website for At The Edge for further information, and a critical assessment of the legend.
Note: the Domain name of the Church's website - halasteam.org - reflects the name of The Halas Team Ministry, which encompasses (in 2018) the parishes of Cradley, Halesowen, Hasbury, Lapal and Romsley.

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 SO9444080753. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

St Kenelm's Church, Romsley shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Romsley 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)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Romsley, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Learn more about Buildings of special or historical interest on the British Listed Buildings (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
The “Wayback Machine” Text Archive (null) (verified 2018-09-19)
“Exploring new interpretations of past and place in archaeology, folklore and mythology” - At The Edge (null) (verified 2018-12-06)
You may want to visit The Halas Team Ministry website for present-day information.

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.

Information last updated on 6 Dec 2018 at 11:39.

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Further Information

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This Report was created 10 Oct 2024 - 20:32:18 BST from information held in the Worcestershire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 7 Feb 2019 at 12:48.

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