History of English Churches in Switzerland – Bex-les-Bains
History of the English Church, Bex-les-Bains
This page records a church we did not know existed.
The other English churches in this series reached us through Paul Schniewind’s Anglicans in Switzerland, Past and Present, through chaplaincy lists, or through the institutions that own the buildings today. Bex-les-Bains reached us through a photograph.
The evidence
In 1915 an illustrated journal of the region, Les Alpes vaudoises, which carried the visitor lists of the Vaud resorts, printed a picture of a stone church — a bell tower, an apse, the unmistakable shape of a small Victorian Anglican building set among trees. The caption reads, without further explanation: “Bex-les-Bains : L’église anglaise.”
It was not new in 1915. Fifteen years earlier, in the issues of 12 and 19 May 1900, the Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey recorded among the guests of the district: “M. et Mme Fishe, Chap. of English Church at Bex, Ireland.” A chaplain of the English church at Bex, with his wife, listed by his post and his country in the way those papers listed a man’s occupation. He came from Ireland.
That is the whole of what we hold.
What we do not know
We cannot yet say when the church at Bex-les-Bains was built, or by whom, or to what it was dedicated. We do not know which of the missionary societies — the Colonial and Continental Church Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, or neither — supported the chaplaincy, nor whether it had a resident chaplain or was served, as so many were, from a neighbouring town. We do not know when it closed, or whether the building still stands.
Bex-les-Bains was a spa. Its saline waters and its position at the foot of the Rhône valley made it one of the treatment stations of the canton, and in the resort advertising of the period it offered itself to “les nerveux et les excitables” — those in need of rest. Where the English came in numbers, an English church tended to follow, and at Bex one did.
We set this page down deliberately incomplete. It is better to record a church we have found and cannot yet describe than to leave it out of the list because our account of it is thin.
If you know anything about the English church at Bex-les-Bains — a photograph, a memory, a name — we would be glad to hear from you.
Date of first Chaplaincy: Unknown; a chaplain is recorded in May 1900
Church dates: Unknown; the building was standing and photographed in 1915
Patron: Unknown
Hotel: Not known — Bex-les-Bains was a spa establishment
Current Status: Unknown
Sources
Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey, 12 and 19 May 1900
Les Alpes vaudoises: journal illustré avec listes des étrangers, 1915 (photograph and caption)
Digitised newspapers consulted at Scriptorium, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne (scriptorium.ch)
Questions answered
- Was there an English church at Bex-les-Bains?
- Yes. A photograph published in 1915 in Les Alpes vaudoises, an illustrated journal carrying the visitor lists of the region, shows a stone church with a bell tower and an apse, captioned simply "Bex-les-Bains: L'église anglaise". Fifteen years earlier, in May 1900, the visitors' paper of Montreux and Vevey listed among its guests "M. et Mme Fishe, Chap. of English Church at Bex, Ireland" — a chaplain of that church, with his wife, over from Ireland.
- What is known about the English church at Bex-les-Bains?
- Very little as yet. We have a chaplain named in 1900 and a photograph of the building in 1915. When it was built, to whom it was dedicated, which society supported it and what became of it are all unknown to us. It does not appear in the standard account of Anglicanism in Switzerland, and it was identified only in July 2026 during a search of the digitised Vaud press.