The concept of the Farncombe Community arose out of visits Sister Carol Graham, a former Anglican missionary and ordained deaconess of the Church of South India, made to the inter-denominational community of Grandchamp [de] in Switzerland, which led her to reflect on the ecumenical lessons the CSI could teach the rest of the Church.
A base was found for the Community at 5 Wolseley Road in Farncombe, the home of Anglican spiritual director Fr Reginald Somerset Ward and, after his death in 1962, the house’s owner, Deaconess Edith Banks, passed the property to the British Council of Churches for the purpose of housing the new venture.
Revd Eric Abbott, Dean of Westminster Abbey, George Reindorp Bishop of Guildford, and Brother Paul of Taizé all took part in the ceremony.
Apart from this, the work of the Community centred on welcoming guests who came on retreat or for quiet days, working with the local Christian Churches on ecumenical matters, and outreach; this included the Companions who came to number more than a hundred, and the Fellowship of Prayer for Unity, which was technically the charitable title of the Community but in practice was a wide group of well-wishers from all Church traditions.
For a while the work was continued by the Ecumenical Spirituality Project led by Gwen Cashmore and Joan Puls, who left 5 Wolseley Road in 1994, then subsequently in a dispersed form by the Fellowship of Prayer, which carried on until 2000, and lastly the Living Spirituality Network, based at Willen in Milton Keynes, which came to an end in 2012.