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Re St Michael Within the Walls, Bath

Bath and Wells Consistory Court: Briden Ch, October 2010 Private place of worship – historic chapel – ‘interested person’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2011

Ruth Arlow
Affiliation:
Barrister, Deputy Chancellor of the Dioceses of Chichester and Norwich
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Abstract

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2011

The chancellor granted a faculty for the removal of pews from an historic chapel which was, in law, a private place of worship but which was open to the public for services. The 18th century chapel formed part of a medieval hospital in Bath which continued to provide sheltered accommodation. In reaching his decision the chancellor took full account of the written views of various members of the public, all of whom lived within Bath and had either worshipped in the chapel or become familiar with it as a place of historic importance. He referred to the dictum of Phillips Ch in Re St Thomas, Lymington Footnote 5 stating that ‘all parishioners, regardless of whether or not they claim or manifest any allegiance to the Church, are entitled to be heard as persons having an interest’. He held that such dictum applied with equal force to an historic chapel outside the parochial system, but visited by members of the public, as it did to a parish church. [RA]

References

5 [1980] Fam 89 at 93H.