St. Peter's Anglican Church Château-d'Oex · Serving the English-speaking Community Since 1899

The Colonial and Continental Church Society

In March 1901 a speaker named Dr Hill addressed the Norwich branch of the Colonial and Continental Church Society. He wanted to correct a common idea. Many people believed that the Society spent a great deal on its chaplains abroad. This, he said, was largely a mistake. A summer chaplain received a “very moderate” honorarium, just enough to give a hard-working clergyman on a small income a rest and a change. As a rule the Society did not pay for his board and lodging either. The hotel where he stayed provided it. That year the Society had 176 summer chaplaincies on the Continent, and “no fewer than 375,000 persons” had come to its services.1

Those few lines explain a good deal about the English churches of Vaud. Most of them began as summer chapels at hotels, and most of them were run by this Society.

Who they were

The Society grew out of two older bodies. One was a society for schools in Newfoundland, founded in London in 1823 by Samuel Codner. The other began in 1835 to help settlers in Western Australia and became the Colonial Church Society in 1838. The two joined on 1 January 1851 as the Colonial Church and School Society. Its work was with British people overseas: settlers in the colonies and, more and more, the English living or travelling in Europe. On 1 May 1861 it took the name Colonial and Continental Church Society.2

It was an evangelical society. In the Church of England of that time, evangelicals were the “low church” party: they stressed preaching and personal faith, and they distrusted ritual. A speaker at Bath in 1862 said that the Society’s principles were those of the Church Missionary Society. It sent out “none but faithful and evangelical preachers and teachers”, he said, “believing that evangelical principles were those of the Church of England”.3 Its report of 1858 had called its evangelical character its strength. As late as 1903 it asked applicants whether they would stand at the north side of the Communion table, as evangelical clergy did, rather than face the altar.4

How it came to the resorts

The Society’s first holiday chaplaincy was at Interlaken, in the 1840s. In 1852 and 1853 it took on Thun, Basle, Lucerne, Vevey and Chamonix.5 The speaker at Bath in 1862 explained its thinking. Travellers gathered at the same places every summer. “It was found that there would be no great difficulty in securing the nomination to the chaplaincies of these places”, and so of placing “godly men at some of the most important stations on the Continent”. The work was done “at a very small expense”.3

The key was the hotels. At most resorts the English service was held in a large room of a hotel, and the hotel-keeper often chose the chaplain himself. The Society offered to take over the appointment in return for a yearly grant towards the chaplain. The hotel no longer had to find a clergyman or pay him.5 By 1880 the Society was making money from its summer chaplaincies.6

For the hotels this was business. Underwood, the Society’s historian, notes that the hoteliers gained from English travellers. Many were eager to help, though he adds that the arrangement raised a problem of conflicting interests.5 An English service was also something to advertise. A hotel courting English guests listed it among its attractions in the London press. In March 1912 the Grand Hotel at Aigle took a column in The Gentlewoman as a “FAVOURITE SPRING RESORT”. It offered golf, tennis, croquet, trout fishing, a resident doctor, electric light, dances and concerts. In the same list came “Resident English Chaplain. English Church in Grounds.”7

Paul Schniewind, the historian of the Anglican church in Switzerland, describes the same partnership. Hotel-keepers were “in most cases the initiators”. They gave the land, helped to pay for the chapel, and gave the chaplains cheap or free rooms. Sometimes they even paid their travel. The societies built the churches, sent the chaplains each season and did the administration.8

A rival arrives

In 1862 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, founded in 1701, began its own work among the English on the Continent. You can read about it on our page on the SPG. The Colonial and Continental saw a challenge. In November 1863 a member of its committee, the Revd R. Burgess, warned his colleagues to expect rivalry. In his view, the SPG meant to check the influence that his own Society had already gained.9

In practice the two societies shared the resorts out between them. On 12 March 1867, for example, Les Diablerets went on the Colonial and Continental’s list, while Engelberg became an SPG chaplaincy.10 The older society kept its lead, both across Europe and in Switzerland.11

Vaud

In Vaud the Society was almost everywhere. Schniewind lists 27 former seasonal chaplaincies in the canton. Nearly all were on the Colonial and Continental’s list: Bex from 1857, Glion and La Comballaz from 1864, Château-d’Œx from 1866, and Leysin from 1891. Only three had the SPG as patron: Caux, Corbeyrier and Aigle.12 The churches at Vevey, Clarens, Glion, Leysin and Château-d’Œx were still listed under the Colonial and Continental in 1949.13 Its strength here seems to have come mainly from arriving first. It reached Vevey in 1853 and Bex in 1857, before the SPG had begun any continental work, and it took most of the other Vaud resorts in the 1860s.12

Not every traveller liked the Society. In 1889 a quarrel divided its committee, and several members resigned. The dispute was about how strictly evangelical its chaplains had to be. A reader who signed himself “Traveller” wrote to The Record, the evangelical weekly. He agreed with an earlier correspondent that the Society was “already sufficiently unpopular on the Continent”. He also pointed to its weak spot: “In a large number of places the Society is dependent for its (literal) locus standi on the good will of hotel-keepers; these men are naturally open to the influence of their guests”. When new hotels opened, he added, guests had sometimes kept the Society out altogether.14

A reader on the other side answered in the same issue. At the health resort where he was staying, he said, the Society’s church was “not nearly full, whilst the S.P.G. and Presbyterian churches are overflowing”. He blamed chaplains who had drifted from evangelical ways.14 Visitors who wanted a more ceremonial style of worship could often find it nearby. At Montreux, St John’s at Territet followed the Anglo-Catholic tradition, while Christ Church at Clarens and All Saints at Vevey were evangelical.15 St John’s was not a society church. Its churchwardens chose its chaplain.13

Later years

The Society kept its evangelical line well into the twentieth century. British prisoners of war had been interned at Château-d’Œx since 1916. In August 1917 the Society advertised for an “Evangelical Clergyman” as chaplain at Rouen, “Also Chaplain at CHATEAU d’OEX, from October to May”.16 By the 1970s it had become the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society. Today it is the Intercontinental Church Society, and it still supports English-speaking chaplaincies abroad.17

If you have papers, photographs or memories connected with the Society’s chaplains in Switzerland, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch. The churches themselves are described in our guide to the English churches in Switzerland.

  1. “Colonial and Continental Church Society. Annual meeting … The Society’s chaplaincies on [the] Continent”, Norfolk Chronicle, 16 March 1901, p. 12 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0000244/19010316), read on the page image. The report calls the speaker both “Dr. Hill” and “Mr. Hill” and gives no forename. ↩

  2. Brian Underwood, The history of the Commonwealth and Continental Church Society (M.A. thesis, University of Durham, 1972), chapters II–III, written from the Society’s own minute books and reports. Durham e-theses 2998. ↩

  3. Report of a meeting of the Society at Bath, Bath Herald, 6 December 1862, p. 6 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0005858/18621206), read on the page image. ↩↩

  4. Underwood, note to p. 47 (the 1858 Report) and note to p. 114 (minute of the continental sub-committee, 3 February 1903). ↩

  5. Underwood, pp. 60–61. ↩↩↩

  6. Underwood, p. 113. ↩

  7. Advertisement, “Grand Hotel, Aigle (Rhone Valley), Switzerland”, The Gentlewoman, 30 March 1912, p. 65 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0003340/19120330), read on the page image. ↩

  8. Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), foreword to Part Three, p. 99. ↩

  9. Underwood, p. 73, citing the minutes of the Society’s Continental Committee, 11 November 1863, and a paper by Burgess of 12 January 1864. ↩

  10. Underwood, note to p. 74, citing the minutes of the Continental Committee, 12 March 1867. Schniewind (p. 104) gives 1866 for the listing of Les Diablerets. ↩

  11. In 1877 the Colonial and Continental had 48 permanent and 80 seasonal chaplaincies, and the SPG had 14 and 37. By 1913 the Colonial and Continental had 39 permanent chaplaincies and 160 seasonal ones (Underwood, note to p. 112, citing the Society’s report to the Archbishop of Canterbury before the 1877 Lambeth Conference committee, and its reports for 1913 and 1914). Paul Schniewind counts 136 places in Switzerland where seasonal Anglican services were once held. The Colonial and Continental looked after 112 of them, and the SPG 24 (Schniewind, foreword to Part Three, p. 99). ↩

  12. Schniewind, pp. 100–107, the entries for each place in Vaud. Aigle was on the Society’s list before 1868. Its chapel, opened on 21 June 1888 (Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 23 June 1888, p. 4), later had the SPG as patron; Schniewind dates the chapel 1889. No source says when the patronage changed. Vevey’s date, 1853, is from Underwood, p. 60. ↩↩

  13. Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1949–50, table of chaplaincies in Switzerland, which gives the patron of each: Château-d’Œx, Clarens, Glion, Leysin and Vevey “(C.C.C.S.)”; Montreux, St John’s, Territet “(Churchwardens)”. ↩↩

  14. Letters signed “Traveller” (dated 23 March) and “Clericus”, The Record, 29 March 1889, p. 17 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0006265/18890329), read on the page image. Traveller opens with “Another secession from the Committee”. ↩↩

  15. Schniewind, entry for Montreux-Territet: “a choice between Anglican services according to the Anglo-Catholic tradition at St John’s or according to the Evangelical tradition at Christ Church, Clarens, and All Saints’ Church, Vevey”. ↩

  16. Advertisement, The Record, 23 August 1917, p. 11 (British Newspaper Archive, BL/0006265/19170823), read on the page image. For the internment, which began in 1916, see the Revd Isaac Hutchinson, “With the British Wounded in Switzerland”, The Record, 26 October 1916, p. 13, read on the page image, and our page on Château-d’Œx. ↩

  17. The name of 1972 is the title of Underwood’s thesis. The present name is the one the Society uses on its website, ics-uk.org. The date of the change has not been confirmed. ↩

Questions answered

What was the Colonial and Continental Church Society?
The Colonial and Continental Church Society was an evangelical society of the Church of England that worked with British people overseas, including the English living or travelling in Europe. It was formed on 1 January 1851 as the Colonial Church and School Society and took the name Colonial and Continental Church Society on 1 May 1861. Today it is the Intercontinental Church Society.
Was the Colonial and Continental Church Society evangelical?
Yes. The Colonial and Continental Church Society belonged to the evangelical, "low church" party of the Church of England. A speaker at Bath in 1862 said it sent out "none but faithful and evangelical preachers and teachers". As late as 1903 it asked applicants whether they would stand at the north side of the Communion table, as evangelical clergy did.
How did the English summer chapels in Swiss hotels work?
Hotel-keepers were in most cases the initiators of the English chapels in Swiss resorts, and for them it was business: an English service helped to attract English guests. In 1912 the Grand Hotel at Aigle advertised its English chaplain in the London press alongside golf, tennis and trout fishing. Hotel-keepers gave the land, helped to pay for the chapel and gave the chaplains cheap or free rooms. A church society, usually the Colonial and Continental Church Society, took over the appointment and sent a clergyman each season. In 1901 the Society had 176 summer chaplaincies on the Continent.
Which English churches in Vaud did the Colonial and Continental Church Society run?
Nearly all the English chaplaincies in Vaud were on the Colonial and Continental Church Society's list. Among them were Bex from 1857, Glion and La Comballaz from 1864, Château-d'Œx from 1866 and Leysin from 1891. In 1949 the churches at Vevey, Clarens, Glion, Leysin and Château-d'Œx were still listed under the Society.
Why were most English churches in Vaud run by the Colonial and Continental Church Society rather than the SPG?
The Colonial and Continental Church Society's strength in Vaud seems to have come mainly from arriving first. It reached Vevey in 1853 and Bex in 1857. That was before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel began any continental work in 1862. It took most of the other Vaud resorts in the 1860s. In Vaud the SPG was patron only at Caux, Corbeyrier and Aigle.