Swanage URC

Wareham URC

The United Reformed Churches in Wareham and Swanage became a Shared Pastorate. This means that Reverend Simon Franklin shares his time between both Churches.

This page will be updated soon. It will include a history of the Church together with times of their servies.

Wareham URC is a 1662 Church (of which there were more in Dorset than in any other county). Thomas Chaplyn, a Cambridge graduate, had been appointed Rector of all the six Parish Churches in the town in 1643, but refused to sign the infamous Act of Uniformity, and as a result served several terms in Exeter Jail. Many of the locals followed him into the wilderness along with his wife and eight children, and used to meet in farm houses and barns in the area. There is a long history of courage in standing up against the establishment. In the 18th century there was a brief split, part of the Unitarian trendiness of those times, and Hutchins, in his 18th century History of Wareham, had our Church down as “The Old Meeting House” then. There are interesting records of the Church in the Dorset Record Office in Dorchester.