Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 27 - Wandsworth
Wandsworth.
A church in Wandsworth received its celebrity from having been long used as a French refugee church. It is now demolished; but there is an engraving of it in The Graphic, vol. xxxii., p. 462. On the front there was inscribed —
Erected, 1573. Enlarged, 1685. Repaired, 1809-1831.
No list of its ministers has been possible. On the marriage of Rev. Jean de la Sale, in 1688, his charge was registered as “Wandsor,” and is supposed to have been Wandsworth. Mr. Burn gives the names of Rev. Pierre Bossatrau in 1699, and De la Chapelle and La Roqueboyer in 1707. Mr. Paul de la Roque, “minister of ye French Chapel, was buried ye 16th April 1732,” and Mr. Thomas Poland, French minister, “was buried ye 1st August 1733.” The wife of Jean de Comarque, escuyer, was (as already noted) buried here in 1731, aged sixty-three, and the Rev. Mr. Comarque was probably a native of Wandsworth, for he married Henrietta Reneu, of Putney, in 1732. Some of the names in Wandsworth, at least for a long time, betokened French origin. We have formerly alluded to the felt-hat makers. With that industry the name of Chataigne was connected, afterwards Chatting; also the name of Bernard; Elizabeth, wife of Mr James Bernard, of Whitechapel, hatter, died 21st January 1769, aged forty-four, and was buried in the Huguenot cemetery. An important name in the parish is Dormay, probably French; it is associated with the building of the tower of All Saints’ Church and many other serviceable acts. “Mrs. Jane Dormay, wife of Peter Dormay, died 14th March 1808, aged thirty-six.”