The history of the parish of St Birinus may be traced back to the seventh century AD. A generation after St Augustine had arrived near Canterbury, Pope Honorius I sent Birinus on a mission to the West Saxons (Wessex). Having been consecrated a bishop in Genoa, Birinus travelled to the French coast where, in 634, he took ship and it is believed he landed nearby Portchester. From there Birinus travelled cross country to Cholsey where King Cynegils of Wessex held court. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle suggests Birinus greatly impressed the king and he subsequently preached to the entire court and royal affinity at Churn Knob above Blewbury.
Birinus' arrival in England had fortuitously coincided with the accession of Oswald to the throne of Northumbria. King Oswald was a committed Christian and patron of St Aidan whom he had brought to Lindisfarne. Bede records when King Cynegils was baptised by Birinus in the Thame at Dorchester in 635, that Oswald stood as sponsor to the King of Wessex. That event almost certainly took place at the fording point where the medieval bridge later stood and which is nearby where our church today stands.
As sponsor of Cynegils, Oswald was making far more than a symbolic gesture. King Cynegils baptism was the essential prerequsitite for a dynastic alliance between the kingdoms of Northumbria and Wessex, to be sealed by the marriage of Cynegils' daughter Cyneburga to King Oswald himself. Then together, these two Christian kings, allies now in faith, directly sought to further the mission of Birinus by bestowing these same lands around Dorchester on the church, thereby enabling Birinus to securely establish a settled mission in Dorchester, in what were then the borderlands between Christian Wessex and Northumbria and the only remaining pagan kingdom in England, Mercia. The royal gift enabled Birinus to send his missionaries safely into Mercia as they were under priviledged protection of both kings. Therefore, although long remembered as “The Apostle of Wessex”, in reality St Birinus played a vital if unsung part in the final phases of the conversion of England to Christianity. And it was from here, by the banks of the Thame, where Birinus had baptised King Cynegils, that Christianity flowered and it was from Dorchester that the dioceses first of Winchester, and later Bath and Wells and finally and Lincoln were founded.
By the 1140s Birinus' cathedral had been refounded as an Augustinian Abbey living under the then far stricter Arrouaisian rule. These canons regular built the current abbey church on the site of the Anglo Saxon cathedral founded by St Birinus. By the time of the dissolution of Dorchester Abbey in 1536, any practical distinction between the two earlier branches of Augustinian canons regular had all but disappeared.
The Davey family and the building of our church
The current church of St Birinus was built in 1849 by the Davey family who lived on the opposite banks of the Thame in the ancient hamlet of Overy. The Davey had acquired the lease of Overy Manor in 1566 from Sir Edmund Ashfield of Ewelme. The Ashfield and Fettiplace were already established local Catholic families who had been prominent both in local administration and in the parliaments of Mary I. Their commitment to the ancient Catholic faith was shared by several prominent Dorchester families including both the Day and the Davey. The Davey were therefore part of a economically self-sustaining network of local recusant families who maintained their Catholicism throughout the centuries of persecution and whose careful inter-marriage preserved their property rights. From the 1580's it was widely known that Mass was said regularly on Davey lands - first in the barn and later in the chapel in the manor at Overy. The Davey also figure in Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian recusant lists. Later, during the French Revolution the family explicitly sheltered exiled French priests, one of whom, Monsignor Thoumin des Valpons, was buried with honour in Dorchester Abbey in 1798. By these times judicial enforcement of the penal laws had ebbed. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Catholic emancipation followed in 1829.
In 1848 John Davey commissioned the young architect William Wilkinson Wardell, himself a convert, to design a church in the Gothic style on land beside the Dower House in Bridge End. These lands had long formed part of the Davey demesne as their lease of the manor at Overy entailed responsibiltiy to maintain the bridge on both sides of the Thame. The Church of St Birinus was completed in 1849 and consecrated by Bishop Ullathorne, who described it as “a perfect gem”.
Shortly after completing his commission in Dorchester, Wardell, won a larger commission in Abingdon. Before that church and school were completed Wardell had left the United Kingdom and in 1858 Wardell settled in Australia where he was responsible for the design of the Catholic cathedrals in Melbourne and in Sydney.
In these same times, Cardinal Newman described the Davey family as “champions of Catholicity in Dorchester” and to this day our Catholic community owes a debt of gratitude to the Davey family and especially to John Davey and his wife Elizabeth for their part in founding our church. That generosity is memorialised by a brass engraving in the nave, which shows them holding a model of the church they built as an offering to future generations of Catholics. The last of the Davey family died in 1901.
Since then, the parishioners under the guidance of their parish priests have maintained Catholic parochial life and preserved and enhanced the fabric of the church of St Birinus. The most recent restoration was undertaken under the guidance of Fr John Osman, parish priest here for thirty years. The church's interior is now something of a showcase for the Gothic revival style.
The Icon of the Baptism of King Cynegils
The beautiful icon of the Baptism of King Cynegils by St Birinus in the Thame in AD 634 was painted by Sister Petra Clare of the Benedictine Abbey of St Cecilia on the Isle of Wight. Cynegils' sponsor St Oswald, King of Northumbria is also clearly depicted in the icon which was in memoriam of Elizabeth Pinniger (RIP) Parish Secretary for many years, who had a particular devotion to our patronal saint.
Our Lady of Dorchester
The Abbey once possessed an image of Our Lady of Dorchester which was a focus for Marian devotions and pilgrimage, most probably destroyed in 1547-8 when by royal injunction King Edward VI ordered the destruction and burning of statues and images in all churches in England. Our church now possesses a copy of a 14th-century statue of Mary and the Christ child, restoring this ancient Marian devotion to the parish. Our Lady of Dorchester - pray for us.
Our Organ
Commissioned from Bernard Aubertin for St Birinus Church by the Davey Consort in 2018, this beautiful organ joyously completes the interior of the church. Hand-crafted, using material local to the Aubertin's workshops, the organ was lovingly brought to life by craftsmanship of rarest quality. Amongst its many uniqe features it possesses a singular stop "the Birini" which enables our founder and patron to strike a fresh note in the hearts of a new generations of worshippers who are drawn here by the church's ancient liturgy and the glorious music it has inspired. When St Birinus came from Rome he brought with him manuscript copies of those liturgical books that had only then recently been codified by Pope Gregory the Great, giving to us in notation the inestimable riches of what since has been known as Gregorian Chant.
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