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

History of English Churches in Switzerland – Arolla

On Sunday 21 August 1904 a bishop from Clifton, in Bristol, consecrated the English church at Arolla, at the head of the Val d’Hérens. Consecration is the service in which a bishop sets a new church apart for worship. The church was named St George’s. During the sermon the preacher spoke of the death of Dr Gurney, an English clergyman who had been killed near Arolla eight days before.1

A salon in the Hôtel Collon

Services at Arolla had begun long before there was a church. Paul Schniewind, the historian of the Anglican churches in Switzerland, records that Arolla was placed on the chaplaincy list of the Colonial and Continental Church Society in 1877. A chaplaincy was a place where the Society sent a clergyman from England to take services for English visitors during the season. At first there was no building. According to Schniewind, the proprietor of the Hôtel Collon, M. Jean Auzevin, put a salon in his hotel at the disposal of the services.2 The earliest of the Society’s lists that we have found naming Arolla is from July 1898. That summer it sent Stanley Mercer, a missioner of the Church Missionary Society.3

Schniewind also records the agreement that led to the church. On 22 August 1901 Auzevin and the Society agreed that the hotel owner would build a church for the English visitors. The church was opened on 10 July 1903.4 An early photograph of the chapel, taken on a glass plate, has been placed online. One comment beneath it names the mountain behind as the Mont Collon. Another places the chapel next to the Grand Hôtel du Kurhaus, hidden among the larches and arolla pines.5

Dr Gurney

The clergyman who died in August 1904 was the Revd Henry Palin Gurney, of Roseworth, Gosforth, near Newcastle. He was born in London on 7 September 1847, so he was fifty-six. He studied at Clare College, Cambridge, and was ordained in 1871. From 1894 he was Principal of the Durham College of Science at Newcastle, later Armstrong College, and he was also its professor of mathematics.6 He went to Arolla that August with two of his daughters. He had asked a friend to spend a few weeks there with them, but the friend could not leave London. It was this friend who later wrote his obituary in the Geological Magazine.7

On the Saturday morning, 13 August, Gurney set out alone. His friend wrote that he went with “only a walking-stick in his hand”, “not saying, probably not knowing, how far he was likely to go”.8 According to La Suisse libérale, guides went out to look for him when he had not come back by the evening. On the Sunday more than seventy people staying at the hotel joined the search, setting out in different directions.9 On the Monday morning people from the valley found his body below a ridge of the Roussette, near Arolla. He had been killed by a fall.10

The body was taken to Arolla. La liberté reported that it was “déposé dans la chapelle anglaise”, laid in the English chapel.11 The accident was reported in the Swiss and British press.12 Gurney was buried at Ganarew, in Herefordshire.13

The consecration

The bishop who came to Arolla on 21 August was Samuel Edward Marsden. He had been born at Sydney and had been the first Bishop of Bathurst, in New South Wales. By 1904 he was an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Bristol, and he lived at Clifton.14 The Record, a Church of England paper, reported that he consecrated the church “acting under the Bishop of London’s commission”.15 The Clifton Society named the church as “St. George at Arolla”.16

The chaplains

The Society’s lists show who took the services. In July 1913 its list gave the Revd A. B. Thornhill for Arolla. In August it named the Revd J. Salwey junior, vicar of St John, Meads, in Eastbourne, and the Revd J. Merrin, vicar of All Saints’, Leyton.17 Schniewind records that in 1972 the Swiss Reformed Church was leasing St George’s.18 We have not been able to trace the church’s history after that.

We would like to know more about the agreement of 1901, the opening of St George’s in 1903, and what became of the church after 1972. If you can help, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch. Other English churches in the Valais are described on our pages for Zermatt, Chandolin and Belalp. The rest are listed in our guide to the English churches in Switzerland.

  1. Clifton Society, 1 September 1904, p. 8 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0002164/19040901, article 035), read on the page image. The right-hand edge of the column is cut off, and the words in square brackets are taken from the archive’s index text: “The Right Rev. S. E. Marsden, Assis[tant Bishop, …] Diocese of Bristol, Clifton, has consecra[ted the church of] St. George at Arolla, in Switzerland, [under commission] from the Bishop of London. … During the sermon reference was made [to the lamentable] death of Dr. Gurney, who fell some 100 [feet near Arolla,] and was killed on August 13th.” For the date of the consecration, see note 15. ↩

  2. Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), p. 107. His source for Arolla is given as “CCCS file”. Arolla does not appear in the Society’s list of foreign chaplaincies for August 1871, which is consistent with a later start but does not prove the date of 1877. A British report of September 1902, which we have seen only as a search extract, mentions an English service “in a room in the Arolla hotel” (Methodist Times, 18 September 1902). It may describe an earlier summer, and it does not name the hotel. ↩

  3. The Record, 1 July 1898, p. 10, read on the page image: “Stanley Mercer, C.M.S. Missioner, to Arolla”. ↩

  4. Schniewind, p. 107: the hotel owner “undertook to build a church for the English visitors”. We have found no report of the agreement or of the opening in the press. ↩

  5. notreHistoire.ch, “Eglise Anglaise d’Arolla, Val d’Hérens, Valais” (item eK2BPQKZ8vQ), posted by Robert Horvay on 23 December 2010: “Photo originale, sur plaque de verre .12 cm x 16 cm”, placed in the period 1900–1909. The comments are by Albin Salamin (“A l’arrière plan, le Mont Collon”) and Martine Grangier (“elle se trouve tout à côté du Grand Hôtel du Kurhaus à Arolla. mais enfouie dans les mélèzes et aroles”). The site gives no date for the church. ↩

  6. J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part II, vol. 3, entry “GURNEY, HENRY PALIN” (OCR text): born 7 September 1847 in London; admitted at Clare in 1866, and a Fellow from 1870; ordained deacon and priest in 1871; Principal of the Durham College of Science, later Armstrong College, Newcastle, from 1894 to 1904, and “Professor of Mathematics there”; “Of Roseworth, Gosforth, Northumberland”. He was also a Doctor of Civil Law of Durham (1896), hence “Dr Gurney”. The obituary (note 7) also gives his birth as 7 September 1847. The Edinburgh Evening News, 16 August 1904, seen only as a search extract, says he “was 56 years of age”. La Suisse libérale (note 9) called him “professeur au Collège scientifique de Newcastle” and put his age at over sixty. ↩

  7. “Henry Palin Gurney, M.A., Hon. D.C.L., F.G.S.”, Geological Magazine, vol. 42 no. 3 (March 1905), pp. 93–95 (OCR text): “Only a few short weeks ago he proposed that they should again spend a few weeks together, this time at Arolla in Switzerland, where he was to go with two of his daughters, but the writer was unable to leave London.” ↩

  8. Geological Magazine, March 1905. The obituary dates his departure to “August 15th” and heads the notice “Died August 14, 1904”, which cannot both be right. Venn gives “Killed Aug. 13, 1904”, as does the Clifton Society (note 1). 13 August 1904 was a Saturday. ↩

  9. “Accident de montagne”, La Suisse libérale, 17 August 1904 (e-newspaperarchives.ch LSL19040817-01.2.11.7), OCR text, dated Arolla, 16 August: “Lorsque le soir, on ne le vit pas revenir, une colonne de guides partit à sa recherche ; le dimanche, plus de 70 personnes en séjour à l’hôtel partirent également dans différentes directions.” The Geological Magazine says only that “Search was immediately begun”. ↩

  10. La Suisse libérale, 17 August 1904 (note 9), OCR text, says that the news came on the Monday morning: the body had been found “entre les Roussettes et le Mont Do lin, par des habitants de la vallée”, after a fall of more than 30 metres, and death must have been instant. The Geological Magazine says that his footmarks were found on a ridge of the Gysa, “a southern spur of Mount Roussette”, and that “Soon after dawn on the following morning his body was discovered several hundred feet below”. The Clifton Society (note 1) has “some 100 [feet”, with the last word taken from the index text. The sources do not agree on the height of the fall. A report from Arolla dated “Monday, Aug. 15”, in the Sunderland Daily Echo of 16 August 1904, says that “Some peasants living [in] the valley discovered the body this morning”. We have seen it only as a search extract. ↩

  11. “Faits divers — Accidents de montagne”, La liberté, 17 August 1904 (e-newspaperarchives.ch LLE19040817-01.2.11), OCR text, which reads “Le cadavre a été transporté fc Arolla et déposé dana la chapelle anglaise”; we give it as “le cadavre a été transporté à Arolla et déposé dans la chapelle anglaise”. The report, sent from Evolène, adds that the body had a head wound and a broken leg. The report from Arolla in the Sunderland Daily Echo (note 10) says that the peasants “brought it to the English church here”. ↩

  12. Besides La Suisse libérale and La liberté (notes 9 and 11), the digitised Swiss press has reports in FAN — L’express, 16 August 1904, and La Rezia, 20 August 1904, which we have seen only in the archive’s index. The British reports include the Sunderland Daily Echo, under the heading “DEATH OF PRINCIPAL GURNEY. FELL OVER A PRECIPICE”, and the Edinburgh Evening News, both of 16 August 1904, which we have seen only as search extracts. ↩

  13. Venn (note 6): “Buried at Ganarew, Heref.” ↩

  14. The Clifton Society (note 1) names him “The Right Rev. S. E. Marsden”. His full name and career are from J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part II, vol. 4, entry “MARSDEN, SAMUEL EDWARD” (OCR text): born at Sydney; Bishop of Bathurst, New South Wales; “Assistant Bishop of Gloucester, 1892-7; assistant to the Bishop of Bristol, 1898”; he “Lived at Clifton”. Whitaker’s Peerage (1906) calls him “1st Bp. of Bathurst (1869-85)”. Schniewind, pp. 107–108, calls him “Bishop Edward Marsden”. ↩

  15. The Record, 26 August 1904, p. 9 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0006265/19040826, article 044), “Colonial and Foreign Church News”, read on the page image: “THE ENGLISH CHURCH AT AROLLA. Bishop Marsden, acting under the Bishop of London’s commission, consecrated the English Church at Arolla on Sunday last.” The paper’s index lists the item at page 857. The Sunday before 26 August 1904 was 21 August, the date Schniewind gives, pp. 107–108. The Gloucester Citizen, 23 August 1904, p. 3 (BL/0000325/19040823, article 011), seen as a search extract, has the same news. ↩

  16. Clifton Society, 1 September 1904 (note 1). Schniewind, p. 108, also gives the name St George’s. ↩

  17. London Evening Standard, 3 July 1913, p. 11: “Arolla, Rev. A. B. Thornhill”; The Record, 1 August 1913, p. 730: “Rev. J. Salwey, jun.; Rev. J. Merrin”, with their parishes given in the same order as “V. of St John, Meads, Eastbourne; V. of All Saints’, Leyton”. Both lists were read on the page image. Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1929 confirms that John Merrin was vicar of All Saints, Leyton, in 1912–13. ↩

  18. Schniewind, p. 108, citing the Society’s file. ↩

Questions answered

Who built the English church at Arolla?
The hotelier, according to Paul Schniewind's history of the Anglican churches in Switzerland. He records that Arolla was placed on the Colonial and Continental Church Society's list of chaplaincies in 1877, and that the proprietor of the Hôtel Collon, M. Jean Auzevin, put a salon in his hotel at the disposal of the services. On 22 August 1901 Auzevin and the Society agreed that the hotel owner would build a church for the English visitors.
When was St George's, Arolla, opened and consecrated?
Paul Schniewind records that the church was opened on 10 July 1903. It was consecrated on Sunday 21 August 1904 by Bishop S. E. Marsden, acting under a commission from the Bishop of London, and it was named St George's. The church was already standing before its consecration. When an English clergyman was killed near Arolla in August 1904, his body was taken to the village and laid in the English chapel.
Who was the clergyman who died at Arolla in 1904?
The Revd Henry Palin Gurney, of Roseworth, Gosforth, near Newcastle. He was fifty-six, and since 1894 he had been Principal of the Durham College of Science at Newcastle and its professor of mathematics. He came to Arolla with two of his daughters. On Saturday 13 August 1904 he set out alone and did not return. His body was found on the Monday morning below a ridge of the Roussette. He had been killed by a fall. At the consecration of the church eight days later, the preacher spoke of his death.
What happened to St George's, Arolla?
Paul Schniewind records that in 1972 the Swiss Reformed Church was leasing St George's. We have not been able to trace the church's history after that.