The Diocese of Winchester forms part of the Province of Canterbury of the Church of England.

Founded in 676, it is one of the oldest and largest of the dioceses in England.

The area of the diocese incorporates:

• the majority of the county of Hampshire (including the city of Southampton), with the following exceptions:
  • the south-eastern quarter of the county (which together with the Isle of Wight constitutes the Diocese of Portsmouth)
  • an area in the north-east (belonging to the Diocese of Guildford)
  • a small area in the west (Diocese of Salisbury)
  • one parish in the north (Diocese of Oxford)

plus

• an area of eastern Dorset
• the Channel Islands (transferred from the diocese of Coutances in 1569, during the reign of King Henry VIII of England)

The diocese is divided into two Archdeaconries:

• the Archdeaconry of Winchester
  • comprises the Deaneries of Andover, Whitchurch, Basingstoke, Odiham, Winchester, Alresford and Alton
• the Archdeaconry of Bournemouth
  • comprises the Deaneries of Romsey, Eastleigh, Southampton, Lyndhurst, Christchurch and Bournemouth.

The Bishop of Winchester heads the diocese and is assisted by two suffragan bishops, the Bishops of Basingstoke and Southampton, who are responsible as area bishops for the north and south of the diocese respectively (roughly corresponding to the archdeaconries of Winchester and Bournemouth).^[1]

The Guernsey and Jersey deaneries are not part of an archdeaconry. Due to their distinctive history and separate civil government, they are not subject to the same methods of governance and systems of canon law as the rest of the Church of England.

The diocese historically covered a much larger area, originally including the greater part of south-eastern England. In the most recent major diocesan boundary changes in 1927, the Archdeaconry of Surrey was removed to form the new Diocese of Guildford, and south-eastern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to form the Diocese of Portsmouth.

The Bishop of Winchester is ex officio a Lord Spiritual of the Westminster Parliament, one of only five prelates of the Church of England with such automatic entitlement.

The Diocese of Winchester made news in late 2009 after it entered financial difficulty. The diocese faced a £1.4 million shortfall and as a result made multiple clergy redundancies, ceasing to fund their university and college chaplaincies and cutting 15% of the staff at the diocesan offices.

  See also

Anglicanism portal

• Bishop of Winchester
• Winchester Cathedral

  References

1. ^ Daily Echo – New Bishop for Southampton

• Church of England Statistics 2002

  External links

• Diocesan website

Anglican dioceses in the United Kingdom and Ireland Church of England Province of Canterbury Bath and Wells Birmingham Bristol Canterbury Chelmsford Chichester Coventry Derby Ely Europe Exeter Gloucester Guildford Hereford Leicester Lichfield Lincoln London Norwich Oxford Peterborough Portsmouth Rochester St Albans St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Salisbury Southwark Truro Winchester Worcester Province of York Blackburn Bradford Carlisle Chester Durham Leeds (proposed) Liverpool Manchester Newcastle Ripon and Leeds Sheffield Sodor and Man Southwell and Nottingham Wakefield York Church in Wales Bangor Llandaff Monmouth St Asaph St David's Swansea and Brecon Scottish Episcopal Church Aberdeen and Orkney Argyll and The Isles Brechin Edinburgh Glasgow and Galloway Moray, Ross and Caithness St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane Church of Ireland Province of Armagh Armagh Clogher Connor Derry and Raphoe Down and Dromore Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh Tuam, Killala and Achonry Province of Dublin Cashel and Ossory Cork, Cloyne and Ross Dublin and Glendalough Limerick and Killaloe Meath and Kildare

Coordinates: 51°03′39″N 1°18′47″W / 51.0607°N 1.3131°W / 51.0607; -1.3131

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