| Diocese of Winchester | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Ecclesiastical province | Canterbury |
| Archdeaconries | Bournemouth, Winchester |
| Statistics | |
| Parishes | 306 |
| Churches | 410 |
| Information | |
| Cathedral | Winchester Cathedral |
| Current leadership | |
| Bishop | Bishop of Winchester (Bishop-designate: Tim Dakin) |
| Suffragans | Peter Hancock, Bishop of Basingstoke Jonathan Frost, Bishop of Southampton |
| Archdeacons | Michael Harley, Archdeacon of Winchester Dr Peter Rouch, Archdeacon of Bournemouth |
| Website | |
| winchester.anglican.org | |
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:
plus
The diocese is divided into two Archdeaconries:
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.
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