page_title: List of places of worship in the Borough of Havant
section_title: Overview of the borough and its places of worship
hierarchical_section_title: List of places of worship in the Borough of Havant / Overview of the borough and its places of worship
caption_attribution_description: Hayling Christian Centre (former Elm Grove Free Church), Elm Grove, Hayling Island, Hampshire, England. Built and registered as a Gospel Mission Hall in 1897; now part of the Elim Pentecostal Church.
context_page_description: As of 2020, there are more than 50 current and former places of worship in the borough of Havant in Hampshire, England. Various Christian denominations own and use 42 churches, chapels and meeting halls across the borough, and there is also a meeting place for Hindus; and 10 other buildings no longer function as places of worship but survive in alternative uses. Havant 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 Havant occupies the southeastern corner of Hampshire and is mostly urban. The towns of Havant, Emsworth and Waterlooville merge into each other, incorporating older villages such as Bedhampton and Warblington and forming a "long sprawl of inter- and postwar development [along] the London road out of Portsmouth". Hayling Island is mostly rural but has some 20th-century suburban development.
context_section_description: The first Christian churches in the area were founded during the Saxon era.  One was on Hayling Island, but it was destroyed by flooding and erosion in the Middle Ages and its site is unknown.  The tower of St Thomas à Becket Church at Warblington is partly Anglo-Saxon.  In Havant town, no church was recorded in the Domesday Book but by the late 12th century there was "a sizeable ... church with a central tower", of which some structural evidence remains.  St Peter's Church and St Mary's Church on Hayling Island date from the late 12th or early 13th century and the mid-13th century respectively; at that time most of the island was owned by Jumièges Abbey in Normandy.  Also of ancient origin is St Thomas's Church at Bedhampton, where the chancel arch dates from about 1140.
  The next period of churchbuilding came during the Victorian era, by which time the Church of England (Anglican church) was England's established church.  Emsworth, the main settlement in Warblington parish, became a separate parish in the 1840s when St James's Church was built (replacing a small chapel of ease on the town square).  Population growth in the large parish of Farlington, which in the 19th century covered the villages of Waterlooville and Purbrook, prompted the construction of St George's Church (1830) and St John the Baptist (1843) respectively in those places.  Meanwhile, the ancient parish churches were subject to various degrees of restoration at this time.  E.A. Gruning extended and transformed the appearance of Bedhampton church in 1869 and 1878; George Edmund Street and Arthur Blomfield's three rounds of alterations at St Mary's on Hayling Island were "fairly thorough but conservative"; architect Francis Bacon undertook a modest programme of work at St Peter's Church on the island in the 1880s; and St Faith's in Havant was largely rebuilt.  In contrast, Warblington's parish church saw little alteration: the main 19th-century addition was a pair of grave-watchers' huts in the churchyard, prompted by the prevalence of body snatching at that time.  Two mission chapels associated with St Faith were also founded during this era. Langstone Mission Church, now dedicated to St Nicholas, was built by a churchwarden at St Faith's: it was attached to his house, Langstone Towers, but has always been available for public worship.  The Brockhampton Mission Church, a tin tabernacle, was erected in 1874 and served that part of Havant for about a century until it was demolished.
  In the 20th century, the rapid growth of population as the area became heavily urbanised resulted in the construction of more Anglican churches.  St Wilfrid's Church opened in 1924 to serve Cowplain, which was then an outlying part of the parish of Catherington; the Eastoke area of Hayling Island had its own church from 1964, when St Andrew's opened; and churches were built in 1962, 1967 and 1970 to serve the central, West Leigh and Warren Park areas respectively of the vast Leigh Park council estate.  Also in 1970, St George's Church at Waterlooville was rebuilt in larger form  to replace its 140-year-old predecessor.
  Havant was "one of five ancient centres of Catholicism in Hampshire, with an unbroken history" during the centuries when penal law applied.  Accordingly it was "the centre of Catholic worship for a large area" in the era before emancipation.  Many members of the local landed gentry were Catholics, and proximity to the English Channel meant that visiting priests from Europe could easily come to serve worshippers and then escape quickly if necessary.  A Catholic mission with a permanent priest was founded in about 1711 at Langstone, and in 1752 a permanent chapel was built in Brockhampton.  This was hidden behind "a very substantially built house" and included a space for the priest to hide.  For many years the chapel served worshippers across a large area covering Chichester, Fareham, Portsmouth and Gosport.  St Joseph's Church on West Street replaced it in 1875, and after World War II chapels of ease (later parish churches in their own right) were founded at Ems
caption: The name elm grove free church is still visible on the building now used as Hayling Island's Elim Pentecostal church.
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