page_title: List of places of worship in the Borough of Fareham
section_title: Overview of the borough and its places of worship
hierarchical_section_title: List of places of worship in the Borough of Fareham / Overview of the borough and its places of worship
caption_attribution_description: St Mary's Church, Church Road, Hook, Warsash, Borough of Fareham, Hampshire. The Anglican parish church of Warsash, situated in the Hook area.
context_page_description: As of 2020, there are 40 current and former places of worship in the borough of Fareham in Hampshire, England. There are 37 churches, chapels and meeting halls currently in use by various Christian denominations across the borough, and three former places of worship survive in alternative uses or, in one case, awaiting a new occupant. Fareham is one of 13 local government districts in the county of Hampshire—a large county in central southern England, with a densely populated coastal fringe facing the English Channel and a more rural hinterland. The borough of Fareham is largely urban and is located in the south of the county, occupying most of the gap between the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth. The old market town of Fareham, which gives the borough its name, is also the largest urban centre; much of the rest of the borough consists of 19th- and 20th-century suburban development which has joined up older villages such as Portchester, Sarisbury, Swanwick and Warsash.
  The 2011 United Kingdom census reported that the majority of Fareham's residents are Christian. The largest number of churches in the borough belong to the Church of England—the country's Established Church.
context_section_description: The Borough of Fareham is situated in the south of Hampshire.  It covers an area of 7,423.27 hectares (18,343.3 acres) and had a population of over 110,000 in 2011.  The borough is mainly urban, and the vast majority of the population live in built-up areas.  Water surrounds the borough to the west, southwest and southeast.  The western boundary is formed by the River Hamble; on the other side is the Borough of Eastleigh.  The foreshore of The Solent extends for several miles southeastwards from the river to Stokes Bay, forming the Borough of Fareham's southwestern edge.  To the southeast, the land on which Portchester Castle, church and Roman fort are built juts out into the northwestern branch of Portsmouth Harbour.  There are also land boundaries with the Borough of Gosport to the south, Portsmouth city to the east and the City of Winchester district to the north.
  Saint Wilfrid is believed to have arrived in present-day Hampshire in 648 ad and introduced Christianity to the area around the River Meon.  St Peter's Church at Titchfield was one of several churches founded in the period between this and the Norman conquest of England; like the county's other early churches its parish served villages across a wide area.  Stonework in the lowest stage of the tower, originally a porch, survives from the Anglo-Saxon era, probably from around 700 ad.  Also of ancient origin is St Mary's Church at Portchester, dated definitively to the mid-1130s and "a first-class Norman monument" retaining its original cruciform plan.  By the end of the Middle Ages only one other church in the area covered by the present borough: Fareham town's parish church, St Peter and St Paul, originally a small chapel but now greatly extended.  Its appearance was transformed in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the medieval chancel is now a side chapel.
  The population of the vast Titchfield parish grew in the 19th and 20th centuries as its constituent villages developed and the area became suburbanised.  In less than 100 years, the ecclesiastical parish was subdivided five times to create six separate parishes.  First to be created was the parish of Sarisbury with Swanwick in 1837, whose parish church was built around that time.  In 1871, the parish of Crofton was formed; the ancient St Edmund's Church was supplemented by a new church in Stubbington, the main centre of population, later that decade.  In 1872, Hook with Warsash parish was established for St Mary's Church at Hook, built the year before.  Locks Heath parish was formed in 1893; a parish church built the following year replaced an earlier mission chapel.  Finally, in 1930 a separate parish was created for Lee-on-the-Solent in the neighbouring borough of Gosport.
  Until 1873, Roman Catholics in the Fareham area were served by the Catholic mission at Soberton, where a converted farmhouse served as a chapel and presbytery.  This was founded in 1747 by descendants of James III of Scotland who had fled persecution in the north of England.  Fr James Bellord, a future Vicar Apostolic of Gibraltar, founded a mission chapel in a shed in Fareham town centre in 1873, and the permanent Church of the Sacred Heart was opened in 1878.  Mass was celebrated in neighbouring Portchester from 1935, and a church was built in 1954 (now demolished).  By 1960 a weekly Mass was said in a drill hall at Park Gate by priests from Fareham, and the permanent Church of St Margaret Mary opened in 1966.  In 1976 a Mass centre was established in Stubbington, superseded in 1985 by the present Church of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception; and in 1980 St Philip Howard's Church was opened in the south of Fareham town.  For some years from 1973, Catholics also shared St Columba's Anglican church in the Hill Park area of the town.
  The Congregational movement, one of the forerunners of the present United Reformed Church denomination, was represented from the 17th century in Fareham town.  In 1836 adherents built a yellow-brick Gothic Revival chapel in the town centre.  This was sold for conversion into a pub and replaced by a modern
caption: St Mary's Church at Hook (1870) was one of several built in Titchfield parish.
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