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

History of English Churches in Switzerland – Geneva

At three o’clock in the afternoon of 1 October 1851, the Bishop of Winchester laid the foundation stone of the English chapel in Geneva. He wore a black gown and bands, and two clergy assisted him. M. Moulinié, the President of the Council of State, was there, with all the English families then staying in the city. The Journal de Genève found the ceremony simple, and wrote that it made a strong impression on those who saw it.1 The bishop was Charles Richard Sumner, and he knew Geneva well. Thirty-seven years earlier, as a young deacon of twenty-four, he had taken the first service of the English congregation there, on Christmas Day 1814.2 Yet English worship in Geneva is older still. It began in 1555, with a group of refugees who were not Anglicans at all.

The Marian exiles, 1555

When Mary Tudor came to the throne in 1553 and set about reversing the English Reformation, many Protestants fled abroad. They went to cities such as Basle, Frankfurt, Emden, Strasbourg, Padua, Zurich and Geneva.3 In Geneva, Calvin persuaded the Council of the Republic to give the English a small church beside the cathedral, Sainte-Marie-la-Neuve, now known as the Auditoire. They shared it with a congregation of Italian Protestants. Valerie Offord, the archivist of Holy Trinity, dates the Council’s grant to 14 November 1555. Paul Schniewind, the historian of the Anglican chaplaincies in Switzerland, puts the congregation’s first service there on 15 November.4

The community was small. Offord writes that the English in Geneva never numbered more than two hundred, and Schniewind puts the refugees from England and Scotland at about two hundred. He adds that Geneva, a city of some twelve thousand people, took in about six thousand Protestant refugees of all nations in these years. The Swiss National Museum counts 233 people in about 140 households, the largest group of Marian exiles anywhere in Switzerland.5 On their arrival the exiles opened a register, now known as the Livre des Anglois. It recorded those who reached Geneva on 15 October 1555 and the English already living there. It also listed the ministers, deacons and elders elected each year, and the baptisms, marriages and burials. The register survives in the Geneva State Archives, catalogued as the register of the English church “sous le pastorat de John Knox et de Christopher Goodman, 1555-1559”.6

John Knox arrived in September 1556 and was granted the citizenship of Geneva. The congregation elected him its minister that year, and he served alongside Christopher Goodman. Knox set aside the Book of Common Prayer and took up Calvin’s order of worship. He later took that order back to Scotland, where it became the model for Presbyterian worship. So the exiles’ services were in English, but they were not Anglican services.7 In February 1556 the congregation published The forme of prayers and ministration of the Sacraments. It contained a confession of faith, a liturgy and fifty-one psalms in English verse.8

The exiles’ best-known work was the Geneva Bible of 1560. Offord names its translators as William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, Lawrence Humphrey, Miles Coverdale, Christopher Goodman and Thomas Sampson. It was the first Bible in English to be illustrated, annotated and divided into verses, and it ran to at least 140 editions between 1560 and 1644. It was this Bible, not the King James version, that the emigrants on the Mayflower took to America in 1620.9 The printing was largely organised and paid for by a rich Exeter merchant, John Bodley, whose son Thomas later founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The printer, Rowland Hall, went back to London and named his printing works there “the halfe Eagle and the Keye”, after the arms of Geneva. He also used the city’s motto, Post tenebras lux.10 Mary died late in 1558, and the exiles began to go home. Queen Elizabeth I gave many of them important posts in her church and government.11

The permanent chaplaincy, 1814

For the next two and a half centuries there were only occasional attempts to revive English services in Geneva. In 1685 the Revd Gilbert Burnet, a historian and later Bishop of Salisbury, was living in exile in Geneva under the Catholic King James II. He was given permission to hold services according to the Book of Common Prayer. It was the first time the liturgy of the Church of England was used in the city.12

Geneva regained its independence in 1813, after fifteen years of French occupation, and the English came flocking back. Offord describes aristocrats on the Grand Tour, merchants and students. The State Council offered them the old hospital chapel in the Bourg-de-Four, which is now part of the Palais de Justice. Offord records a fixed tenure of twenty-five years and four conditions. The English were to pay for the church, and services were to have the simplicity of an English parish church. The priest was to be ordained in the Church of England and appointed in England, and he was to be approved by the State Council.13 Sumner took the first service there on Christmas Day 1814. Schniewind treats that date as the beginning of the first permanent Anglican chaplaincy in Switzerland. A chaplaincy is an English congregation abroad with its own clergyman. The oldest seasonal chaplaincy is a different question. He gives that to Thun in 1841, ahead of Interlaken and Meiringen.14

Sumner also had family ties to the city. In January 1816 he married Jennie Fanny Barnabine Maunoir, the eldest daughter of a professor of surgery at Geneva. He was Bishop of Winchester from 1827 to 1869.15 The congregation he left behind was always short of money for its own needs, but it was generous to others. Between 1817 and 1853 the committee’s minutes record some seven hundred gifts of alms. They went to individuals, to whole families and to groups of people travelling together, and the church also gave regularly to the city’s Bureau de Bienfaisance.16

The church is built

In 1846 a group of British residents opened a subscription in Geneva and in England for a church of their own. Offord notes that it was not a good time, as the revolutions of 1848 were soon to shake Europe. She credits the mediation of Sir Robert Peel Jnr, then British Minister in Berne, with winning the congregation a plot of land.17 The site lay on the old city fortifications, in what is now the rue du Mont-Blanc. It is just off the main street from the railway station to the Mont-Blanc bridge, and Schniewind thought it “certainly the English church easiest to find in any Swiss city”.18

The Grand Council of Geneva decided on 30 October 1850 to grant the land free of charge, and a law of March 1852 enlarged the plot. A foundation called the Anglican Chapel at Geneva was set up on 19 April 1851 to run the church’s affairs. Schniewind gives that date for the gift of the site itself.19 Building began in 1851. The heritage records name two architects, David Monod and Jean-Pierre Guillebaud, who directed the work. The canton’s register of listed buildings describes a neo-gothic church of Anglo-Norman inspiration, on a cruciform plan, with tall pointed windows and a strong tower.20

Sumner laid the foundation stone that October, and he came back to consecrate the church on 30 August 1853. Consecration is the service in which a bishop sets a church apart for worship. The Bishop of London gave up his right to officiate to Sumner, at the congregation’s request. The Journal de Genève explained that Sumner had old ties with Geneva and close friendships in the city. The congregation was very large and mostly English, both residents and travellers. The government and the city sent deputations, and the Consistory and the Company of Pastors attended in a body.21 At a meeting in the Casino afterwards, the committee reported a deficit of 19,136 francs. It blamed the unexpected cost of carrying the materials, and other expenses nobody had foreseen.22 Schniewind records that the church seated about 350 and cost £4,000, of which the Swiss Church of Geneva gave £1,123.23 There were problems with the building from the start. The tower was never strong enough to hold the two bells it had been meant to carry. The roof had to be renewed in 1866 because water was getting in.24

Schniewind also records that the town of Geneva presented the clock. Its inscription hopes that the little clock, a small token of the town’s gratitude, will mark only happy hours for the English, above all for those living in Geneva. Schniewind adds that the clock is reported never to have worked. The clock and tower were being restored in 2015 with help from the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, and Offord expected the work to be finished during 2016.25

Quarrels in the 1870s

Offord calls these early years “a stormy beginning”. Money was tight, the building gave trouble, and the committee fell out with its chaplains. In August 1872 the Journal de Genève reported that the committee had dismissed the Revd Henry Downton, chaplain for more than fourteen years. At a meeting on Monday 12 August, four members had noted the general discontent in the congregation and the chaplain’s hostile attitude towards them. They then resolved unanimously that his pay would stop the next day. The paper complained that they had cut off his stipend overnight without even warning him.26 The committee replied that it had placed six months’ salary, 3,125 francs, at the British Consulate for him. Downton had refused it, the committee said, and insisted on keeping his post.27 Schniewind adds that on the following Sunday the congregation found the church gates locked. They went instead to the nearby Hôtel Métropole, where Downton took the service.28

A few years later there was a second quarrel. Schniewind records that the Revd Acton Sillitoe was appointed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. When he arrived, members of the committee barred him from the church by force. They then had him brought before the Justice of the Peace for causing a disturbance. After this and other incidents, Schniewind writes, the Society withdrew its patronage from Geneva. The Cambridge register records Sillitoe as chaplain at Geneva in 1876 and 1877, and later as Bishop of New Westminster in British Columbia.29

Quieter times came with the Revd William Jephson, who was chaplain from 1877 to 1881. Schniewind gives 1876 for his arrival, but the university registers give 1877, and Offord dates the years of “peace and progress” from 1877.30 Schniewind adds that from 1883 a new bishop’s jurisdiction for northern and central Europe brought regular visits from the bishop. In his view this helped to keep any disputes within the congregation until the bishop’s next visit.31

A place in the city

From then until 1914, Offord writes, Holy Trinity was one of the leading institutions in Geneva. In 1884 a Mrs Jephson gave the east window, English glass on the theme of the glory of the Blessed Trinity.32 In 1887 the church endowed a bed at the Cantonal Hospital to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Any British subject could use it free of charge for up to thirty days a year. Ten years later the community set up the Victoria British Aid Fund, to help British residents in need, and Offord recorded it as still active in 2016.33

In April 1890 the Queen herself passed through. A crowd gathered at Cornavin station, but strict orders kept the public out. The royal train of about ten carriages arrived at twenty past six. The British Consul, Daniel Barton, presented the delegation of the English community. The Queen had risen in her saloon carriage, and she spoke a few words to him. Then the chaplain, the Revd Joseph Last, handed her an address from the English in Geneva. Mrs Barton and Lady Emily Peel presented baskets of flowers. After ten minutes the train left for Lausanne, and the Queen never stepped down from her carriage.34 Barton founded the Harmonie Nautique band and built the Victoria Hall, so that the band could play in bad weather. His wife, Victoria Alexandrina, was a daughter of Sir Robert Peel Jnr and Queen Victoria’s goddaughter. A plaque to her is on the south wall of the chancel.35

Church and state in Geneva were separated in 1907. In 1910 the foundation became a society, under a new constitution that made every British subject of either sex a voting member after a year’s residence in the canton.36 The Americans in Geneva had their own Episcopal church, Emmanuel. Schniewind noted in 1992 that Geneva was the only place in Switzerland with two Anglican congregations. One belonged to the Church of England, the other to the Episcopal Church of the United States. He records that during the First World War the government banned the heating of churches. The two congregations therefore held joint services in the winter, in Holy Trinity and Emmanuel by turns, an arrangement that worked “very satisfactory”.37

Between the wars and after

After the war the church’s finances were at a low ebb, and the Colonial and Continental Church Society was asked to help.38 In the 1930s the pound sterling lost half its value, and many British residents had to leave Geneva. The Second World War reduced the congregation to a handful. Offord credits the church’s survival to the arrival of an energetic new chaplain, the Revd Cecil Williams, and Schniewind and Crockford’s Clerical Directory date his time at Geneva from 1940.39

By the early 1980s the building needed a complete renovation. The church launched a Renovation Appeal in 1983, and in February that year the building was listed as an historic monument. Schniewind gives the date as 16 February, and says the listing gave the appeal an immediate lift. The work cost 1,350,000 Swiss francs, including a new organ by the Swiss builder Kuhn. It was the largest undertaking in the parish’s history, and a loan from the canton helped it go forward.40 On 2 June 1985 a service of thanksgiving marked the end of the work, in the presence of the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe.41

In 2022 the church’s own website described Holy Trinity as a church in the Archdeaconry of Switzerland, within the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe, and still entirely self-supporting. In the early 1990s members living near Nyon began services for English speakers in their area. Offord records that by 2016 this had become the independent chaplaincy of La Côte.42 In the 1970s the Christmas Eve service of lessons and carols grew too large for Holy Trinity. After a few years in the Old Catholic church of St Germain, it moved to the Cathedral of St Pierre. It has been held there ever since, in the only church in the city big enough for everyone who comes.43

We would like to know more about the chaplains of the early nineteenth century, about the quarrels of the 1870s and about the Mrs Jephson who gave the east window. If you can help, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch. For the church’s life today, see the website of Holy Trinity Church, Geneva. Two years after Sumner’s first service in Geneva, English worship began along the lake at Lausanne. How an innkeeper near Thun began the first summer chaplaincy in 1841 is told in our guide to the English churches in Switzerland, which also describes the other churches.

  1. Journal de Genève, 2 October 1851, p. 4 (letempsarchives.ch, article 5185243), read on the page image: “— Hier, à trois heures de l’après-midi, a eu lieu la pose de la première pierre de la chapelle anglaise. M. l’évêque de Winchester, vêtu en robe noire et rabat, et assisté de deux vicaires, a officié. M. Moulinié, président du Conseil d’Etat, assistait à la cérémonie, ainsi que toutes les familles anglaises en séjour à Genève. La cérémonie était simple, et elle a fait une vive impression sur les assistants.” The report appeared on Thursday 2 October, so “hier” is 1 October. Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), p. 35, and the heritage record on Vitrosearch (note 19) give the same date and name Sumner. ↩

  2. J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (A Cambridge Alumni Database, entry SMNR810CR): born 22 November 1790; “Ord. deacon (Norwich) June 5, 1814; priest, 1817”; “First Minister of the English Church at Geneva, 1814.” Valerie Offord, A Brief History of the English Community in Geneva and Holy Trinity Church (Holy Trinity Church, Geneva, March 2016), p. 3, for the first service on Christmas Day 1814. Schniewind, pp. 34–35, for “the age of twenty-four” and the thirty-seven years. ↩

  3. Offord, p. 1: “cities such as Basle, Frankfurt, Emden, Strasbourg, Padua, Zurich and Geneva”. Offord was the church’s archivist. Diccon Bewes, Slow Train to Switzerland (London, 2013), also says that Anglicans first fled to Geneva in the 1550s because “they feared dying at the stake”. ↩

  4. Offord, p. 1: “This request was granted on 14 November 1555.” Schniewind, p. 33, names the church “Notre-Dame-La-Neuve” and gives the first service on 15 November 1555. The chronology of H. van Muyden on the church’s website (see note 21) says that the Petit Conseil “put the Church of Sainte-Marie-la-Neuve (Auditoire) at their disposal”. ↩

  5. Offord, p. 1: “the English community in Geneva never exceeded two hundred”. Schniewind, p. 33: “The number of refugees from England and Scotland, some 200”, and “6,000 protestant refugees to a city numbering at that time 12,000”. He adds that they did not all arrive at the same time. Schniewind names his source for this chapter as Dyne Steel, The History of the English Church in Geneva (1986), which Offord edited. Swiss National Museum blog, “The Marian exiles in Switzerland” (blog.nationalmuseum.ch, November 2020): “Geneva held the most important concentration of Marian exiles with 233 persons or some 140 households.” The same blog says that two of the exiles founded Holy Trinity; that is a mistake. ↩

  6. Offord, p. 1. Archives d’État de Genève, Livre des Anglois ou registre de l’Eglise anglaise de Genève sous le pastorat de John Knox et de Christopher Goodman, 1555-1559 (AEG, E.C. Communautés diverses 2), shown on the Archives’ web page for the 2003 exhibition Genève, cité d’accueil (archives-etat-ge.ch, page “3-livre-des-anglois-ou-registre-de-leglise-anglaise-de-geneve-sous-le-pastorat-de-john-knox-et-de-christopher-goodman-1555-1559”). The Archives credit the exhibition texts to Valerie Offord and her colleagues; the catalogue was published as The Welcoming City: English-Speaking Protestants from 1555 to the present day (2003). The van Muyden chronology dates the gift of the register to the Petit Conseil to 1559, the exhibition text to 1560. In 1853 the Journal de Genève already described “un livre appelé « le Livre des Anglais, » lequel se trouve encore à Genève” (3 September 1853; see note 21). ↩

  7. Offord, p. 1, for Knox’s arrival in September 1556 and his citizenship; van Muyden: “1556 – Election by the congregation of John Knox as Minister”; the archive catalogue title (note 6) for Goodman. Schniewind, p. 33: Knox “abandoned liturgy and the Prayer Book of the Church of England and adopted in Geneva Calvin’s order of worship”, which became “the model for the Presbyterian form of worship”. Van Muyden describes the exiles’ services as held “in English according to the rites of the Geneva Reformed Church”. ↩

  8. Offord, p. 2. The full title continues “… vsed in the Englishe Congregation at Geneua”, and the book was printed in Geneva by John Crespin. ↩

  9. Offord, p. 2: “It was the first Bible in English to be illustrated, annotated and divided into verses”; “at least 140 editions between 1560 and 1644”; “This and not the King James’s version was the one that the emigrants on the Mayflower took to America with them in 1620.” Schniewind, p. 33, names only Whittingham, Gilby and, “perhaps”, Sampson as translators. The 2003 exhibition text adds John Knox. ↩

  10. Offord, p. 2. She explains that Hall named the works “after the heraldic arms of the city of Geneva”. ↩

  11. Offord, p. 2: “After the death of Mary Tudor late in 1558, exiles began to return home.” Schniewind, p. 2: “a good number of the exiles were made dignitaries and bishops under Elizabeth.” ↩

  12. Schniewind, pp. 2 and 34; Offord, p. 3, who describes Burnet as “distinguished historian, Court Chaplain and later Bishop of Salisbury”; van Muyden: “1685 – Permission granted for the first time”. A speech reported in the Journal de Genève of 3 September 1853 (note 21) lists earlier attempts to restore English worship “en 1643, puis en 1652, par l’évêque Barnet en 1680”. We follow the three church histories, which all give 1685. Offord describes Burnet as living in exile in Geneva; Schniewind, p. 2, has him journeying through Switzerland and reaching Geneva in 1685. ↩

  13. Offord, p. 3. Her four conditions read: “a) the expense of establishing and maintaining the church be borne by the English community, b) services be in English with the simplicity customary in English parish churches, c) an ordained Church of England priest be appointed by the authorities in England, who d) would be approved by the State Council and subject to their authority.” Van Muyden and Schniewind, p. 34, also place the first chapel in the Bourg-de-Four. A report read at the consecration in 1853 recalled that the chapel had been granted in 1814 at Sumner’s own request (Journal de Genève, 3 September 1853; note 21). ↩

  14. Schniewind, p. 34: “This date is regarded as the beginning of the first permanent Anglican chaplaincy in Switzerland.” On p. 6 he adds that services began in Lausanne “for the first time in November 1816”. On p. 118 he writes that Thun, “thanks to the Swiss innkeeper Herr Knechtenhofer, started in 1841”, and gives Interlaken 1842 and Meiringen 1850 (pp. 8 and 89). ↩

  15. Venn (note 2): “Married, Jan. 24, 1816, Jennie Fanny Barnabine, eldest dau. of J. P. Maunoir, M.D., Professor of surgery at Geneva”; “Bishop of winchester, 1827-69”. He died on 15 August 1874. ↩

  16. Offord, p. 3: “Between 1817 and 1853 the Church Committee Minutes record over seven hundred entries of alms given not only to individuals, but also to whole families and groups of people travelling together.” Schniewind, p. 34, gives “about 700 entries”. Both go back to the minutes through Dyne Steel’s history (note 5), so they are probably not independent. ↩

  17. Offord, p. 4: “In 1846 a group of British residents launched a subscription fund in Geneva and England”; “It was not a favourable time for such a project as the 1848 revolutions were plunging Europe into turmoil”; “through the mediation of Sir Robert Peel Jnr, then British Minister in Berne”. Schniewind, p. 34, and van Muyden also date the start to 1846. The two heritage records (notes 19 and 20) credit Sir Robert Peel with a large financial contribution instead, and do not add “Jnr”. ↩

  18. Offord, p. 4: “on the site of the old fortifications of the city”. Schniewind, pp. 34–35, for the rue du Mont-Blanc and the main street “which leads from the railway station to the Pont de Mont-Blanc”. Genève-archi, “Église anglaise” (geneve-archi.ch/batiments/eglise-anglaise/), adds that it stands partly on the bastion du Cendrier. ↩

  19. Vitrosearch, “Holy Trinity Church, rue du Mont-Blanc 14b” (vitrosearch.ch/en/buildings/2176732, entry by Valérie Sauterel, 2008): “Le 30 octobre 1850, le Grand Conseil de Genève décide de concéder gracieusement un terrain”; “Le 22 mars 1852, une nouvelle loi augmente la superficie du terrain octroyé.” The State Archives’ own preface to the 2003 exhibition also mentions the Grand Council’s grant of land (archives-etat-ge.ch, page “14-construction-de-leglise-anglicane”). Offord, p. 4, for the foundation of 19 April 1851. Schniewind, p. 34: “The Government of the Canton made on 19 April 1851 the generous gift of the present site”. The van Muyden chronology also gives 1851 for the grant, and 1852 for a further grant of land. ↩

  20. Offord, p. 4, and the 2003 exhibition text give May 1851 for the start of building; Vitrosearch gives the summer of 1851. Vitrosearch describes the work as “sous la direction de J.-P. Guillebaud, avec le concours de l’entrepreneur et architecte D. Monod”. The Genève-archi page quotes the canton’s 1994 register of listed buildings: “Le sanctuaire fut élevé en 1851-1853 par l’architecte David Monod dans un style néo-gothique d’inspiration anglo-normande : de plan cruciforme, avec un transept peu saillant, il est percé de vastes baies ogivales et doté d’un puissant clocher”. A second, unsourced description on the same page credits the design to Monod, “modifiée en 1852 par Jean-Pierre Guillebaud”, and describes a square porch-tower with four pinnacles and an openwork balustrade, built of Meillerie stone with facings of molasse. That description also says the church was “Inaugurée en 1843”, which is plainly a mistake, so we have not relied on it. ↩

  21. Journal de Genève, 3 September 1853, p. 1 (letempsarchives.ch, article 5199216), read on the page image: “L’évêque de Winchester officiait, l’évêque de Londres lui ayant cédé ce droit, à la demande de la congrégation, à cause des rapports que l’évêque de Winchester a eus avec Genève, et de ses intimes liaisons avec notre ville”; “L’auditoire, très-nombreux, se composait surtout d’Anglais, soit résidant, soit en voyage. Le Gouvernement et la Ville étaient représentés par des députations. Le Consistoire et la Compagnie des Pasteurs assistaient en corps.” The report does not give the day. Offord, p. 4, Schniewind, p. 35, Vitrosearch, and van Muyden all give 30 August 1853. Van Muyden’s chronology, “Significant events in the history of the English Church in Geneva”, is on Holy Trinity’s web page “History of our Church” (holytrinitygeneva.org/welcome/our-church/, as seen in 2022). ↩

  22. Journal de Genève, 3 September 1853 (note 21), report read at the Casino: “un déficit dans les fonds de 19,136 fr., lequel déficit a été causé par le coût inattendu du transport des matériaux et par d’autres dépenses imprévues”. ↩

  23. Schniewind, p. 35: “seating about 350. It cost £ 4,000 of which the Swiss Church of Geneva generously gave £ 1,123.” We have not found these figures in another source. ↩

  24. Offord, p. 4: “the tower was never strong enough to hold the two bells which it had been planned to house”. Vitrosearch: “Le toit est rénové déjà en 1866 à cause d’infiltrations d’eau.” ↩

  25. The inscription reads: “Puisse cette petite horloge, faible gage de leur gratitude, ne marquer que des heures heureuses pour la grande nation Anglaise, surtout pour ceux de ses enfants que nous avons le bonheur de posséder au milieu de nous.” Schniewind, p. 35, for the gift and the inscription, and “It is reported that the clock never worked.” The English summary of the inscription is ours. Offord, p. 6: “The renovation of the church clock and tower will be completed during 2016 thanks to the generous intervention of the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation.” Van Muyden: “2015 – Tower clock renovation and organ updating.” We have not confirmed that the work was completed. ↩

  26. Offord, p. 4, for “a stormy beginning”. Journal de Genève, 22 August 1872, p. 3 (letempsarchives.ch, article 10182288), read on the page image. It calls Downton “chapelain de l’Eglise anglicane de Genève depuis plus de quatorze années”, and prints the committee’s minute from the Swiss Times: “Lundi, 12 août 1872 … Considérant le mécontentement général existant dans la congrégation … Considérant d’ailleurs l’attitude très-hostile prise par le chapelain envers le comité ; Le comité décide à l’unanimité que la paie du chapelain cessera à dater de demain 13 août”. The minute is signed by J. Grove, president, G. Roughton, E. D. Lyon and E. Barrel. The paper added that the four had stopped his pay “du jour au lendemain … sans même le prévenir”, and that the Bishop of London and the Council of State had guaranteed Downton “certains droits” in 1857. Schniewind, p. 35, writes that he was dismissed “at 24-hours’ notice” after fourteen years, and his list of chaplains (pp. 38–39) dates Downton’s arrival to 1858. The Cambridge register (Venn, entry DWNN836H) gives “Chaplain at Geneva, 1857-73”. ↩

  27. Journal de Genève, 25 August 1872, p. 3 (letempsarchives.ch, article 10182461), read on the page image, the committee’s letter: “Le Comité a déposé au Consulat britannique à la disposition du chapelain, M. Downton, son traitement pour les six mois à venir à partir du 12 août courant, soit la somme de 3,125 francs. M. Downton avait refusé de la recevoir et prétend conserver sa place en dépit de tout.” ↩

  28. Schniewind, p. 35. The two reports of August 1872 do not mention the locked gates or the service at the Métropole, and we have not found them elsewhere. ↩

  29. Schniewind, p. 35: “forcibly barred from entering Holy Trinity by members of the Committee who had him hauled before the Justice of the Peace on a charge of causing a disturbance”. He places this “three years later” than the Downton affair. Venn (entry SLTW859AW): “Chaplain at Geneva, 1876-7. Chaplain to the British Legation at Darmstadt, 1877-9. Bishop of New Westminster, British Columbia, 1879-94.” Sillitoe is not on Schniewind’s list of chaplains. We have not found the incident in the press. ↩

  30. Venn (entry JF837W): “Chaplain at Geneva [ Switzerland ], 1877-81.” Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1715–1886, “Jephson, William (2)”: “chaplain at Geneva, 1877-81.” Offord, p. 4: “From 1877 to 1914 there ensued a period of peace and progress”. Schniewind, pp. 35 and 39, gives 1876. ↩

  31. Schniewind, pp. 35–36: “With the establishment of the Jurisdiction for Northern and Central Europe in 1883, regular visits of the Bishop became the rule.” ↩

  32. Offord, p. 4, for Holy Trinity as “one of the leading institutions in the city”. Van Muyden: “1884 – Presentation of East window by Mrs. Jephson.” Genève-archi: “Dans le chœur, vitrail anglais, « The Glory of the Blessed Trinity » (Passion et Résurrection), offert en 1884.” The chaplain William Jephson died at Geneva in 1905 (Venn, note 30), so the donor was not his widow. We have not found out who she was. ↩

  33. Offord, pp. 3–4. She adds that the free bed was no longer available by 2016. ↩

  34. “Passage de la reine Victoria”, Journal de Genève, 23 April 1890, p. 3 (letempsarchives.ch, article 5247309), read on the page image: “Le train royal, composé d’une dizaine de wagons, est arrivé à 6 h. 20. M. Daniel-F.-Barton, consul de S. M., a aussitôt présenté à la reine la délégation de la colonie anglaise … puis le Rev. Joseph Last a remis à S. M. une adresse de la colonie anglaise. Enfin Mme Barton et lady Emily Peel ont présenté de magnifiques corbeilles de fleurs à leur gracieuse souveraine. … Après dix minutes d’arrêt, le train royal est reparti dans la direction de Lausanne, sans que S. M. soit descendue de voiture.” Offord, p. 4, dates the stop to “September 1890” and gives “exactly nine minutes”, with the train coming from Aix-les-Bains. We follow the report printed at the time. Venn (entry LST872J) records Last as “Chaplain at Geneva, 1880-94”; Schniewind’s list gives 1881. ↩

  35. Offord, p. 4: Barton “built the Victoria Hall, Geneva’s prestigious concert hall, to enable the band to perform in bad weather”. She describes his wife as “the daughter of Sir Robert Peel Jnr, Queen Victoria’s goddaughter and a member of the Church congregation”. The State Archives’ preface to the 2003 exhibition also names the Victoria Hall as “financé par le consul général de Grande-Bretagne Daniel Barton à l’intention de l’Harmonie nautique fondée par lui”. ↩

  36. Offord, p. 5, for 1907, 1910 and the voting rule. Van Muyden: “1910 – Adoption of a new constitution by Holy Trinity in order to become a Society instead of a Foundation.” Schniewind, p. 36: “In 1910 Holy Trinity became an independent Society”. ↩

  37. Schniewind, pp. 36–37: “In Switzerland, Geneva is the only place with two Anglican congregations”; “government prohibition on heating of churches made it necessary to hold joint services alternately in Holy Trinity and Emmanuel Church during the winter months, an arrangement which worked “very satisfactory”.” The sources disagree on Emmanuel’s dates. Offord, p. 5, calls it “the American Episcopal church built in 1874”. Schniewind’s chapter on Emmanuel (pp. 39–40), drawn from its centenary history of 1973, has the first service on 28 July 1873, the corner stone laid on 27 July 1877 and the church opened at Easter 1878. We have found nothing to support a building in 1874. ↩

  38. Schniewind, p. 37: “Arrangements were made with the Colonial and Continental Church Society (CCCS) in London which helped to overcome the low ebb during the 1920s.” Offord, p. 5, places the Society’s help during the First World War and calls it by its later name, “the Colonial and Commonwealth Church Society”. Crockford’s Clerical Directory still lists Geneva under the Society’s patronage in 1949–50, 1961–62 and 1967–68, in its table of overseas chaplaincies. ↩

  39. Offord, p. 5: “with the depreciation of the pound sterling to fifty percent of its previous value, many British residents were obliged to leave Geneva”; “it was only thanks to the providential arrival of a new and energetic Chaplain, Rev. Cecil Williams, that the church avoided having to close down altogether. The congregation was reduced to a mere handful”. Offord gives no year. Schniewind, p. 37, gives 1940, and Crockford’s Clerical Directory 1949–50 has Williams at “Geneva … from 1940”. ↩

  40. Offord, p. 5, for the Appeal “launched in 1983”, the listing “in February of that year”, the “generous loan from the Geneva Cantonal authorities” and the Kuhn organ. Schniewind, p. 38: “The Renovation Appeal in 1983 coincided with the recognition of the church building as Historic Monument on 16 February 1983 which gave the appeal an immediate uplift”; “The total cost, including a new organ, amounted to Sfr 1,350,000, the largest undertaking in the history of the parish.” Van Muyden and Vitrosearch also give 1983 for the listing. We have not found the listing in the Geneva press of 1983. ↩

  41. Offord, p. 5; Schniewind, p. 38. ↩

  42. Holy Trinity Church, Geneva, “History of our Church” (note 21, as seen in 2022): “We are a church in the Archdeaconry of Switzerland within the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe”; “Holy Trinity continues to the present day to be entirely self-supporting financially.” Offord, p. 6, for La Côte, which then held services in Gingins and in Divonne, France. In 1992 Schniewind still listed Gingins as served from Holy Trinity (p. 39). ↩

  43. Offord, p. 6: “It is the only city church big enough to hold all who wish to attend.” ↩

Questions answered

When was Holy Trinity Church, Geneva built?
The Grand Council of Geneva decided on 30 October 1850 to grant the land, on the site of the city's old fortifications. Building began in 1851. The foundation stone was laid on 1 October 1851 by Charles Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, and he consecrated the church on 30 August 1853. Thirty-seven years before the stone was laid, Sumner had taken the congregation's first service as a newly ordained deacon of twenty-four.
Which is the oldest Anglican chaplaincy in Switzerland?
Paul Schniewind, the historian of the Anglican chaplaincies in Switzerland, treats Christmas Day 1814 as the beginning of the first permanent Anglican chaplaincy in the country. On that day Charles Richard Sumner took the first service in the old hospital chapel in the Bourg-de-Four in Geneva. The oldest seasonal holiday chaplaincy is a separate question. Schniewind gives it to Thun in 1841, ahead of Interlaken (1842) and Meiringen (1850).
What is the connection between the English church in Geneva and the Geneva Bible?
Holy Trinity traces its origins to the Marian exiles, English and Scottish Protestants who fled the reign of Mary Tudor. In November 1555 they were given the use of a small church beside the cathedral. This community produced the Geneva Bible of 1560. It was the first Bible in English to be illustrated, annotated and divided into verses, and it was the Bible the Mayflower emigrants took to America in 1620.
Did the Marian exiles in Geneva worship as Anglicans?
No. Their leader John Knox set aside the Book of Common Prayer and took up Calvin's order of worship, which later became the model for Presbyterian worship. Their services were in English, but they were not Anglican services. The first Anglican services in Geneva came in 1685, when the Revd Gilbert Burnet was given permission to hold services according to the Book of Common Prayer.
Who designed Holy Trinity Church, Geneva?
The heritage records name two architects, David Monod and Jean-Pierre Guillebaud, who directed the work. The canton's register of listed buildings describes a neo-gothic church of Anglo-Norman inspiration on a cruciform plan. The Grand Council of Geneva granted the land in 1850, and the building was listed as an historic monument in 1983.
Why did the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel withdraw from Geneva?
The church committee quarrelled with its chaplains in the 1870s. In August 1872 it stopped the pay of the Revd Henry Downton, who had been chaplain for more than fourteen years. According to Paul Schniewind, the committee later barred the Revd Acton Sillitoe, newly appointed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, from the church and had him charged with causing a disturbance. As a result, Schniewind writes, the Society withdrew its patronage from the Geneva chaplaincy.