Church History and Background
The history of St Paul’s, Church Hill, Camberley, started in the 1880s, when a wealthy wine merchant, Thomas Boyes, owned a large area of land on which he built a house (Hermon House, now Frimley Hall Hotel), and then (around 1885) a non-conformist chapel nearby for the use of his family and staff (the building now called St. Paul's Church Hall).
Not many years later the family left Camberley, and the estate (and the chapel) were sold to George W. Fowler. A conservative Anglican, he gave the Rector of Frimley a lease on the unused chapel in 1895 with strict covenants about the services being Church of England only. From the start (the church opened on 8th September 1895 as a plant of St. Peter's in Frimley), it was extremely popular and quickly outgrew the capacity of the chapel. By 1899 further talks were had with George Fowler to extend the lease and include some more land for new, bigger premises.
An architect was engaged (William D. Caroe, a Danish architect of numerous ecclesiastical buildings including St Davids and Durham Cathedrals, and Tewkesbury and Romsey Abbeys) and funds were raised. On 25th January 1902 the foundation stone was laid by Mrs Fowler, and five years later the new church was completed in Scandinavian style and dedicated on 11th May 1907.
(Below, the original drawing of W.D. Caroe - though the large belfry was never built)
Ending the formerly agreed 999 years lease, the freehold of the church was finally obtained and St. Paul's consecrated on 24th December 1932, becoming a parish church on 13th April 1935 with Rev, W. W. Warren appointed the first vicar after being curate since 1932.
After the decision by the PCC in the late 1970s to build a large meeting room,
St. Christopher was dedicated on 22nd June 1980 at the west end of the church. This was followed by a large re-ordering and refurbishing within the existing building in 1986/87 and the erection of
the Church Centre on the north side of the church, dedicated on 18th September 1988 (see FIGURE 1 below).
More recent activities included the re-roofing of the church building in 2017/18, and
St. Paul's itself acting as a planting church for St. Barbara's in Deepcut in 2019.
The parish borders for St. Paul's can be seen on the map below:
The church membership list has been fairly constant for many years at around 300+ of which around 230 are on the Electoral Roll.