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

History of English Churches in Switzerland – Clarens

On Christmas Eve 1883, the London Standard printed a letter from the English chaplain at Clarens, on the Lake of Geneva. “If those who assemble to worship in their comfortable churches knew the discomfort and inconvenience which my congregation suffer,” wrote the Revd William G. Ormsby, “I am persuaded many would be found to contribute to the building now in progress.” The French, the Germans, the Presbyterians and the Roman Catholics of Clarens each had their own place of worship, he explained. Only the members of the Church of England were “alone forced to have their services … in a room not expressly set apart for religious worship”. He thanked the Duke of Connaught and a Mr A. C. Bevan for their gifts, and asked for more.1

A week later the paper printed a reply, signed only “A Resident in Montreux”. There was already, the writer pointed out, “a comfortable, convenient, and beautiful English Church” at Territet, less than two miles away. It stood “with a railway station and steam-boat pier almost opposite its doors”. Anyone in Clarens who disliked Mr Ormsby’s room could take the train, and many already did. Christ Church, first used in 1888, was built by a congregation that wanted a church of its own, less than two miles from St John’s.8 It stayed separate from St John’s for eighty years.2

A congregation in a villa

The English came to Clarens to stay. In June 1881 a Vaud paper noted that there was talk of building an English church there. The reason it gave was “le nombre toujours croissant des Anglais qui choisissent cette contrée comme lieu de séjour”. That is, the ever-growing number of English people choosing the district as a place to stay. Why the Montreux shore drew them at all is told on our page Wintering on the Swiss Riviera.3

Clarens was placed on the list of the Colonial and Continental Church Society in 1875, and at first its English services were held in a private house. On the last Sunday of October 1875 the Feuille d’avis de Montreux listed them “chez Mlle Gaberel, villa Perret, Clarens”. They were at eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon, with Holy Communion on the first and third Sundays of the month. They were still there in the summer of 1877. By September 1879 the congregation had moved to rented rooms, the Salles de Réunions. The paper’s notice said plainly who stood behind it: “Supplied by the Colonial and Continental Church Society”, with Mervyn A. Clare as chaplain.4

The addresses in these notices are nearly all private houses. There is the villa Perret, and later the chaplains’ homes at the Clos des Roses, Mon Repos, the villas Dubochet and the Maison Rousseau. Clarens was a colony of residents.

Eight years of fund-raising

The church was the work of one member of the congregation above all. Major de St-Hubert d’Entragues was an English reserve officer living at Clarens. He began collecting money in 1880, with the approval and blessing of the Bishop of London, and in the end raised more than 30,000 francs himself. At the end of 1883 he also brought out a short book on Modern War, which the Manchester Guardian recommended. In 1886 came a study of the Sudan campaign, printed at Montreux.5

Gifts came from visitors of rank. In April 1882 the Duchess of Anhalt-Bernburg, who had been staying at Montreux, left “une somme importante” in the major’s hands for the English church at Clarens. That August the Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria’s son, sent “un splendide don”. The same report explained that the Bishop of London had now extended the Clarens chaplaincy to take in Vernex and Montreux, the whole commune of Le Châtelard. In May 1883 Mr Bevan sent 2,500 francs. Schniewind records that the church property was transferred to the Colonial and Continental Church Society in 1882, which fits a congregation securing its land.6

The work itself went slowly. Ormsby described the building as in progress in December 1883. But in March 1886 Le Semeur vaudois, surveying the English churches of the lake, reported that one “entre Vernex et Clarens est en construction”, still under construction. The press does not explain the delay. The estimate reported when the church opened was 125,000 francs, without the land.7

The English of Clarens took possession of their church on Palm Sunday, 25 March 1888. The Lausanne paper was careful to say that they had done so “officieusement”, informally, while they waited to be installed officially by the Anglican bishop. It added that Ormsby had preached. The Feuille d’avis de Montreux described the building as “un petit joyau gothique”, a little Gothic jewel. Like the German church, it was built on a terrace overlooking the main road between Clarens and Vernex. The writer added that fifteen years earlier English services had been held “dans les salons et dans les galeries des hôtels”. Territet, Les Avants and Glion now had their chapels, and “seule la congrégation de Clarens ne possédait pas d’église”.8

Bishop Thomas Wilkinson made his first visitation of the Montreux chaplaincies in May 1888, but no report of a consecration has been found.9

Ten years after the opening, the debt was still not cleared. When the Revd J. G. Bullock became chaplain in 1889 he found a building debt of £3,500. By 1898 he had paid off £2,900. A visiting Devon vicar then wrote to The Record asking its readers to clear the rest, describing Bullock as “a good preacher of pronounced Evangelical opinions”. Cheques were to be sent to the chaplain at 5, Dubochet-villas, crossed “Cuenod’s Bank, Clarens”.10

An Evangelical church beside an Anglo-Catholic one

That phrase in The Record marks the difference between Clarens and Territet. There were no parish boundaries between the English churches of the district, and each drew its congregation from all along the shore. St John’s at Territet followed the Anglo-Catholic tradition; Christ Church, Clarens, like All Saints’ at Vevey, followed the Evangelical. When amalgamating the two Montreux chaplaincies was discussed much later, it was called “ultimately possible”, but Schniewind records that “each church wished to maintain its own tradition”.11

The weekly services column in the visitors’ paper shows what that looked like on an ordinary Sunday. In the winter of 1898 Christ Church, Clarens-Vernex offered Morning Prayer, sermon and Holy Communion at half past ten, and Bible classes for the young in the afternoon. Evening Prayer and a short sermon came at three, and on Wednesdays there was the Litany “and Exposition”. The chaplain signed himself “J. G. Bullock, M.A., Formerly Rector of St-Nicolas with St-Runwald, Colchester, Licensed Chaplain for Clarens and Vernex”. In January 1903 his successor, A. Vandeleur Carden, announced “Christmas Carols at Evening Service”.12

Schniewind could not trace the church’s own records, and the column “News from the Chaplaincies” in The Anglican Church Magazine, edited for years at Territet, has nothing from Clarens. The newspaper columns give the succession that the lost records cannot, from Mervyn A. Clare in 1879 to Charles P. Heywood in 1935. In summer, when the permanent chaplain was away, clergy came out from England for a month. The Revd Septimus Buss, rector of St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, did so in August 1906.13

One of these names leads to our own valley. In 1900 the visitors’ list recorded “Rev. E. D. Lampen — Chaplain at Clarens”, with Mrs Lampen. The same Dudley Lampen was later chaplain at Château-d’Œx.14

The church appears in the Montreux papers at the colony’s great moments. Queen Victoria’s funeral took place on 2 February 1901. The Feuille d’avis de Montreux announced a solemn service at Christ Church at half past ten that Saturday morning, with singing, and the organ playing Handel’s Dead March from Saul. A second service followed that afternoon at St John’s, Territet, and one had already been held in the English chapel of the Grand Hôtel at Caux.15

Bishops came regularly. As a rule they held a confirmation one day at Christ Church and the next at St John’s. In May 1891 the paper announced that Bishop Wilkinson, coadjutor to the Bishop of London, would preach at the English church of Clarens that Sunday morning.16

The church also served the English schools that settled on the Riviera between the wars. In 1927 two English girls’ schools were founded in the district, St George’s at Clarens and Châtelard School. Schniewind records that St George’s regularly took the chaplain of St John’s as its school chaplain, and Châtelard the chaplain of Christ Church. The chaplain at Clarens, he adds, was responsible for several schools in the region. Châtelard later moved into the old Grand Hôtel at Les Avants, and the story of the schools is told on a separate page. In 1936 the Clarens chaplain, Charles Heywood, was made Rural Dean in Switzerland.17

After the war

The Revd A. Douglas Adams took over Christ Church after the Second World War, and from Clarens he also served Château-d’Œx. In December 1949 our own village paper announced the carol service at St Peter’s with “Rev Douglas Adams, from Clarens”. From 1950 to 1962 Clarens and Vevey formed a joint chaplaincy under him.18

The church was still the place where the English colony gathered when it mattered. In February 1952 the Journal de Montreux announced the official ceremony of the English colony in memory of King George VI. It was to be held “en la chapelle anglaise de Clarens”, with the town’s authorities represented. In September 1953 Bishop Stephen Neill preached there. His message, the paper reported, was “tout d’espérance et de réconfort”, and it had given his hearers new strength to face “les incertitudes du temps présent”.19

In October 1965 Arthur Mathews was buried at Territet, aged ninety-two. The Feuille d’avis de Vevey recalled that he had been organist of the English church at Clarens for many years.20

Clarens was by then a small congregation served from Vevey. In August 1968 the Journal de Montreux carried a notice from “The English Churches of All Saints’ Vevey and Christ Church, Clarens”. It set out the services “until further notice”: Holy Communion and Morning Prayer at Vevey, and Morning Prayer at 11.15 at Christ Church. Enquiries were to go to the chaplain, the Revd Leslie Wright. The church still appeared in the paper’s list of services on 26 October, “opposite Hotel Continental”. By the list for Sunday 3 November it had gone. Schniewind records that in October 1968 the bishop closed Clarens as a place of worship. Another account gives 1965 for the closure, but the Montreux press shows services continuing for three more years.21

At the end of 1975 the church was sold to the New Apostolic Church in Switzerland. Its own account of the building records that Apostle Hermann Hänni signed the purchase contract on 22 December 1975. The same account records that the reordered church was consecrated by Patriarch-Apostle Hans Urwyler on 13 May 1979. The Montreux and Vevey congregations merged in 2011, and after three years of building work the Montreux congregation moved back into the renovated church on 8 March 2015.22

The building still stands on its terrace above the main road between Clarens and Vernex, where the list of services once placed it “opposite Hotel Continental”. It is now the home of another congregation.

We would like to know more about the people of Christ Church, especially between the wars, when the records fall silent. We have also yet to find a photograph of its interior as an English church. If you have family papers, photographs or memories of Christ Church, Clarens, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch.

Related pages: The English churches in Switzerland · Wintering on the Swiss Riviera · St John’s, Territet · All Saints, Vevey · Les Avants · English schools in the Alps

  1. Wm. G. Ormsby, “An English Church at Clarens”, letter dated 22 December, The Standard (London), 24 December 1883, p. 2 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0000183/18831224, art. 009), read on the page image. Schniewind (p. 103) gives the first chaplain as “the Revd W C Ormsby”; the Standard letter and the Montreux services column of 1883 and 1888 both print “Wm. G. Ormsby”, which is followed here. ↩

  2. “A Resident in Montreux”, letter dated 28 December, The Standard, 1 January 1884, p. 3 (BNA BL/0000183/18840101, art. 030), read on the page image. From the opening of Christ Church in 1888 to its closure in 1968 is eighty years. ↩

  3. L’Estafette (Lausanne), 19 June 1881, p. 5, “Clarens” (Scriptorium item 97522), translated. ↩

  4. Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), p. 103, for the Society’s list; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, services columns for Sunday 31 October 1875 (item 506746), 8 January 1876 (item 504879), 1 July 1876 (item 504805) and 21 July 1877 (item 506677); 27 September 1879 (item 504698) for the Salles de Réunions and Mervyn A. Clare. ↩

  5. Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 5 April 1888, p. 4, “L’église anglaise de Clarens” (item 503687), for the collection begun in 1880, the Bishop of London and the 30,000 francs; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 15 December 1883, p. 4 (item 503669), on Modern War; 25 June 1884, p. 4 (item 503938), reprinting the Manchester Guardian’s review (read in the OCR text of the page, not on the image); 25 November 1886, p. 4 (item 504962), on The Soudan Campaign, whose author is described as “major de réserve anglais”. ↩

  6. L’Estafette, 27 April 1882, p. 4 (item 97784); L’Estafette, 8 August 1882, p. 4 (item 97869); Nouvelliste vaudois, 24 May 1883, p. 3 (item 114182); Schniewind, p. 103, for the transfer of the property in 1882. That the 1882 transfer concerned the site rather than a finished church is an interpretation. ↩

  7. Ormsby, as note 1; Le Semeur vaudois, 5 March 1886, p. 77 (item 681027); Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 5 April 1888 (item 503687), for the estimate. ↩

  8. Feuille d’avis de Lausanne, 3 April 1888, p. 4, “Montreux” (item 89279), for “officieusement” and the installation still to come; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 5 April 1888, p. 4 (item 503687), for the rest, translated. The Lausanne paper also names St-Hubert d’Entragues and counts the English churches in the same way. ↩↩

  9. Schniewind, p. 57, for Wilkinson’s first visitation in May 1888, combined with the chaplains’ conference. Searches of the Vaud press for a consecration between April 1888 and 1891 returned nothing. ↩

  10. C. T. Ward, “Help Wanted for Clarens”, The Record, 13 May 1898, p. 27 (BNA BL/0006265/18980513, art. 087), read on the page image. ↩

  11. Schniewind, p. 57 and p. 60. ↩

  12. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, 29 October 1898, p. 20 (item 397604), and 3 January 1903, p. 22 (item 397765). The 1903 column prints “A. VANDELEUR CARDEN”, as does the Montreux directory of 1905 (“Chaplain A. Vandeleur Carden”). ↩

  13. Schniewind, p. 103, for the lost records and the magazine column. The chaplains attested in these columns are Mervyn A. Clare in 1879, William Ormsby from at least 1883 to 1888, J. G. Bullock from 1889, A. Vandeleur Carden by 1901 and Charles P. Heywood in 1935. Clare: note 4. Ormsby: Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 15 December 1883 (item 503669) and 19 May 1888 (item 503491). Bullock: note 10, and Journal et liste des étrangers, 18 November 1893. Carden: Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 1 February 1901, and note 12. Heywood: Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 5 October 1935, p. 2 (item 507205). Buss: Journal et liste des étrangers, 25 August 1906, p. 32 (item 430075): “Chaplain for August: The Rev. Septimus Buss LL.B., Rector of St-Anne and St-Agnes E.C., Hôtel Eden.” The Society’s lists name other summer chaplains, among them the Revd L. W. Jackson in July 1913 and the Revd R. Clews in August 1913. The dates are dates of attestation, not full tenures. ↩

  14. Journal et liste des étrangers, 28 April 1900, p. 16 (item 397968). Lampen’s later career is traced on the Château-d’Œx pages. ↩

  15. Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 1 February 1901, p. 4, “Colonie anglaise”. ↩

  16. Schniewind, p. 103; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 21 May 1891, p. 4 (item 504379), read in the OCR text of the page. ↩

  17. Schniewind, pp. 59, 103 and 104. ↩

  18. Schniewind, p. 80 (Château-d’Œx) and p. 104 (Clarens); the carol service of December 1949 in the Château-d’Œx village paper (Scriptorium item 435224); Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 1949–50, gives Adams at “Ch. Ch. Clarens, Dio. N. and C. Eur. from 1949”. ↩

  19. Journal de Montreux, 11 February 1952, p. 5 (item 441899), and 19 September 1953, p. 7 (item 447072), translated. ↩

  20. Feuille d’avis de Vevey, 30 October 1965, p. 11 (item 217453). ↩

  21. Journal de Montreux, 6 August 1968, p. 2 (item 446686); 26 October 1968, p. 2 (item 446635); 2 November 1968, p. 2 (item 446759), where the services list for Sunday 3 November runs straight from the Croix-Bleue to the Evangelische Stadtmission, the place Christ Church had occupied a week earlier. Schniewind, pp. 60 and 104. The date of 1965 is from Oliver Rütten, “Montreux : des alpinistes, des touristes, des fidèles”, nac.today, 8 October 2020. Schniewind also records that Sidney J. Baggott, “Chaplain of Leysin with Christ Church Montreux”, took the Berne chaplaincy in 1968. ↩

  22. Schniewind, p. 104; Rütten, nac.today, 2020. The Vaud press we searched carries no report of the sale. ↩

Questions answered

When was Christ Church, Clarens, built?
Christ Church, Clarens, was built slowly, between about 1883 and 1888. The English of Clarens worshipped first in a private villa, from 1875, and by 1879 in rented rooms, the Salles de Réunions. Money was being collected from 1880. In December 1883 the chaplain, William Ormsby, wrote of "the building now in progress", and in March 1886 Le Semeur vaudois still described the church as under construction. The congregation took possession of it informally on Palm Sunday, 25 March 1888, while it waited to be installed officially by the Anglican bishop.
Why is so little known about the English church at Clarens?
The records of Christ Church, Clarens, are lost. Schniewind could not trace them, and the column "News from the Chaplaincies" in The Anglican Church Magazine, edited for years at Territet, has nothing from Clarens. The local papers make up much of the loss. They printed the English services week by week with the chaplain's name, reported the gifts towards the building and recorded its opening, and English papers carried appeals for money.
When did the English church at Clarens close?
Christ Church, Clarens, closed in October 1968. Schniewind records that the bishop closed Clarens as a place of worship that month. The Montreux paper bears him out. In August 1968 a notice from the English churches of Vevey and Clarens announced Morning Prayer at 11.15 at Christ Church. The church was still listed with its services on 26 October. By the list for Sunday 3 November it had gone. Another account gives 1965 for the closure, but the Montreux press shows services continuing for three more years.
What happened to the building?
At the end of 1975 Christ Church, Clarens, was sold to the New Apostolic Church in Switzerland. Its own account records that Apostle Hermann Hänni signed the purchase contract on 22 December 1975, and that the reordered church was consecrated on 13 May 1979. After three years of building work the Montreux congregation moved back into the renovated church on 8 March 2015. The building still stands on its terrace above the main road between Clarens and Vernex.
What was the chaplain of Clarens responsible for?
Schniewind records that the chaplain at Clarens was responsible for several schools in the region. Two English girls' schools were founded in the district in 1927, and one of them, Châtelard School, regularly took the chaplain of Christ Church, Clarens, as its school chaplain. Châtelard later moved into the old Grand Hôtel at Les Avants. Visiting bishops came regularly, and as a rule held a confirmation one day at Christ Church and the next at St John's, Territet.
Who paid for Christ Church, Clarens?
Christ Church, Clarens, was paid for by gifts collected over eight years. The collection was begun in 1880 by a member of the congregation, Major de St-Hubert d'Entragues, who raised more than 30,000 francs himself. The Duchess of Anhalt-Bernburg, the Duke of Connaught and a Mr A. C. Bevan all gave, and the chaplain appealed for money in a London paper. The estimate reported when the church opened was 125,000 francs, without the land. When the Revd J. G. Bullock became chaplain in 1889 he found a building debt of £3,500, and by 1898 he had paid off £2,900 of it.