God reckons years in thousands (Ps. 90:4, Rev 20:2-7), but we poor mortals, even Phyllis Hochstrasser, whose 90th birthday we celebrate, cannot cast our minds back to Thursday, 20 September 1906, the day when St Ursula's was consecrated. Come with me on a journey back in time.
A kilogram loaf of bread cost 35 rappen, Gilbert Sissons, the chaplain, earned Fr 200 a month, a British pound would buy 25 francs. The Simplon and Weissenstein tunnels had just opened, the post office had just offered its first money transfer accounts and its first motor bus service. Toblerone had not yet been invented (that came in 1908).
The English community in Berne had had their own full-time Anglican chaplain since 1861. Before then, the diplomatic community had brought ministers from England to serve for short periods, but in that year, an English missionary society, the Colonial and Continental Church Society, took charge, and in 1887, the task of making spiritual provision to the small English and American community passed to another missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
Services had been held in the former chapel of the Bürgerspital and in the Petrus- und Pauluskirche. But the latter was large and cold, and also led to diplomatic rumblings between Whitehall and the Vatican. So in 1887, the Anglican community arranged to hold its services in the hall of the Lerberschule, which was then in Nageligasse.
The school hall was warm. It was a good size for the small congregation of some twenty or thirty, rising to forty at Christmas and Easter. But it was not the church family's own. The congregation toyed with the offer of the Antoniuskirche in Postgasse, now used by the Lutherans, and with the idea of a church opposite the Münster in the Englische Anlage. But there was no money.
In 1904, the English Berne Land Company, which owned Kirchenfeld, started to develop the area south of Kirchenfeldstrasse. They offered the square from which spectators had watched the 1891 celebrations of the city's 700th jubilee for the building of a church. There was one major condition: the £1000 needed to build the church had to be gathered by the end of 1905.
£400 arrived almost at once from the city's hotel association. The remaining money was slow to come in, despite great efforts by Sir William Conyngham Greene, the British ambassador and his wife, and appeals by Sir Henry Lunn in the hotels to which he was attracting English travellers. It was the wealthy Mrs Castleman, a visitor from Missouri, who enabled the full sum to be raised, in thanks at the cure of her adopted daughter, who had come to Berne for an operation.
By November 1905, plans had been drawn up for the present church by the architects Eduard Rybi and Ernst Salchli. The land was transferred to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel on 16 January 1906, and the building was complete by late spring. The first service was the 8.30 said communion on 22 July, with a congregation of one, but there were 55 at the main service, a sung communion.
The consecration service in the afternoon of 20 September was a joyful occasion. The Bishop of Fulham, Thomas Wilkinson, dedicated the church. The new British ambassador, Sir George Bonham, and the President of the Confederation, Ludwig Forrer, were present, along with many members of the diplomatic corps, and representatives of the Reformed and Old Catholic churches.
The church was not quite finished. The metal fence around the property cost a further £200, and was only built two years later. The window depicting St Ursula and St Etheldreda was not dedicated until 1911, and the bell, cast by the firm of Rüetschi in Aarau, followed in 1918. (The hall and the house had to wait until the 1950s - this year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the chaplain's move from Kirchenfeldstrasse 50 to church house.)
The last hundred years have seen many changes in society, in the church community here in Berne, in our activities and in our worship. No doubt the next hundred years will see more changes. But in 2106, the church's spirit will surely be there, offering welcome, fellowship and the message of the Gospel to generations still to come.
HD