St Julien’s Chapel, Southampton

St Julien’s Chapel is part of the ‘God’s House Hospital’ in the old City of Southampton in Hampshire. Once a large complex of alms-houses and farms, it continues to accommodate a number of people, but on a much diminished scale. I could gain no access to the chapel but was pleased to discover that it had been given for the use of Huguenot refugees at the time of Elizabeth I. Unlike today’s migrants from the Channel who desire free hotels and generous benefits, those of the 1560s were escaping death and actual persecution from the Church of Rome and its French royal puppets. On 21st December, 1567, 85 pious Frenchmen and women met to worship the God of heaven without fear of police force and priestcraft; even today, Julien’s retains the French spelling with which these godly Gauls would have been more familiar. Then, we took in real refugees fleeing real religious persecution, and were blessed by their presence. 

A D