Hedge End Becomes a Separate Parish

1868

In 1868, Hedge End was formally separated from the parish of Botley and established as its own ecclesiastical parish, with St John the Evangelist Church as the parish church. The creation of a separate parish reflected the growing identity of the Hedge End settlement and the increasing distance, both physical and social, between the village core of Botley and the scattered dwellings of Hedge End. The new parish gave the community its own administrative identity and its own church governance, laying the foundations for the distinct identity that Hedge End would develop over the following century.