Christ Church, whose spire features in a number of aerial photos of Weymouth taken in the early part of the last century, was built in 1874 as a daughter church of St Mary’s.
In those days the parish had a large clerical staff including a Rector, two curates and a curate in charge at Christ Church.
By the 1930s the staff was down to a Rector and a curate, and Christ Church was kept going with the help of a Lay Reader who was also the Police Court Missioner – the predecessor of a Probation Officer.
The congregation continued to decline and in the 1930s a cinema company offered to buy the site on which to build a cinema. It is interesting to know whether, with changing tastes, had this taken place, how long it would have lasted! The church authorities declined this approach.
However in 1939 the newly appointed Rector Rev E.L. Langston decided to close the church with very short notice. With the outbreak of the Second World War it became a Welcome Club for evacuees and then a British Restaurant. It remained until it was sold in 1955 and demolished in 1956-7 by E.G. Coleman, a local builder. He presented the town with a seat made from stone from the building which is in Greenhill Gardens. The ten bells presented by Sir Henry Edwards went to a church in Lincoln.
From 1958 the site was used as a car park and a block of flats and shops, named Garnet Court (after Garnet Mahoney who ran the car park) now occupies the site.
