NVI-IEN Archbishop King, Bishop of Portsmouth, went last week to Dogmerstield Park in Hampshire to bless the novitiate house of the De La Salle Brothers he was on a site that had been the residence of Bishops uninterruptedly from 1099 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.
The Manor of Dogmersfield existed in Edward the Confessor's time. King Henry I granted it to the Bishop of Bath and Wells and his successors, and later licence was given by Bishop William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, to Bishop John Harewell (13666) to confer orders in his chapel At Dogrnersfield, Numerous ordinations did, in fact, take place there and the records still exist.
A letter front King John to the Papal Legate is dated from Dogmersfield April 23, 1206. In November, 1504, the meeting took place there of King Henry VII and Prince Arthur with Catherine of Aragon.
In 1540 Dogmersfield passed to Sir John Wallopp and so left Catholic hands. .
The present house, built in 1725 and modernised in 1936, became a school in 1945. It again came into the market last year and was acquired by the London province of the De La Salle Brothers. Their previous house at Assington Hall, Suffolk, had become too small for their needs.