Mrs Harriet Lawson: A Lasting Gift to Fareham

Mrs Harriet Lawson is remembered at St Peter & St Paul, Fareham, because of a substantial gift she left to the parish after her death in 1852.

Born in 1771, Harriet lived through a period of enormous change in Britain: the American and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, the growth of the Royal Navy and the rapid expansion of nineteenth-century towns such as Fareham.

Her particular connection with the church was expressed through generosity. In her will she left £1,000 to the parish.

That was a very considerable sum in 1852. Depending on how it is compared with modern incomes and purchasing power, it represented many years of an ordinary worker’s earnings. A bequest of this size could provide a parish with a significant and lasting source of support.

Gifts such as Harriet Lawson’s were an important part of parish life in the nineteenth century. Before modern systems of public funding and organised charitable provision, churches often depended heavily upon local benefactors for the maintenance of buildings, support of the poor and other parish work.

Her memorial therefore records more than a name and two dates. It preserves the memory of someone who chose to use part of her wealth for the continuing life of the church and community in Fareham.

More than 170 years later, her name remains in the church because that generosity was considered worth remembering.