Our History

Thirty years ago, long before food banks became a familiar part of British life, Southampton City Mission opened the doors to its first Basics Bank in an empty shop unit in Shirley. Founded on 22nd May 1996 at the request of local social workers, the charity supported a handful of families with emergency food parcels and clothing during its first week of operation.

Early Years

  • City Missions emerged in the 1820s as a Christian response to growing urban poverty, they were among the first interdenominational Christian societies.

    The very first City Mission was started in 1826 when a young Christian named David Nasmith founded the Glasgow City Mission. Nasmith pioneered a holistic model of Christian care, driven by a desire to bring both spiritual and practical help to inner-city poor suffering from poverty, disease, and addiction. Today, the UK City Mission movement continues to operate across many major cities, adapting to local needs by running food banks, night shelters, and outreach programs for the homeless and refugees. Each City Mission is an independent charity, networked in the UK by relationship and the common cause of the Gospel. www.cmmuk.org

  • Southampton City Mission was formed on 1st January 1963 by churches in Southampton as a vehicle to support the work of Oscar Penhearow. Shortly before that time Oscar had been invited to work in the city as a Door to Door Evangelist by Leith Samuel and Arthur Wallis to work with Above Bar church, but it was soon realised that Oscar’s influence would be wider than that and the Mission was formed to enable his work to become city wide.

    In 22 years over 100,000 doors were knocked and the influence of Oscar’s ministry is still felt to this day. Oscar retired in 1985 and the work was taken on jointly by Dave Thorpe and Dave Caplin for the next two years.

  • After this there followed a period when the missions sole purpose was to care for and maintain the property that the retired City Missioner lived in and to care for Oscar in his retirement. In addition the trustees also waited to see if God would raise up a new ministry that might be recognised as SCM.

  • Chris and Annette Davis were working as volunteers in the Shirley parish, (St James by the park), to build up relationships with people living in the local tower block. Over a two year period they had started a coffee morning in the block, a home group in their home, a Christian children’s after school club, a work amongst the elderly and an embryonic furniture project, (called the Dorcas Project). They were feeling that their work could be wider than just one parish and began to explore the possibility of forming their own charity to enable that to happen. During that process they were put in touch with the trustees of Southampton City Mission. On the 23rd November 1993, Chris was appointed as the new City Missioner.

    Over the next 6 years, a number of other local anti-poverty projects were established, including Basics Bank, Removals project, Paint project, and Christmas Complete (toys). In 1999, a separate, new charitable company was formed called SCRATCH (Southampton City And Region Action to Combat Hardship) to manage and further develop the anti-poverty work.

    Recognised with an MBE
    It was for this part of the work that Chris was recognisedby the late Queen, receiving an MBE for charitable services to the City of Southampton in the 2009 New Years Honours list.

Recent Years

Basics Bank - a focus of the SCM Mission
In August 2008 Duncan House moved from being a Trustee of the Mission, to its second employee alongside Chris Davis, and in 2009, Basics Bank came back under the wing of the Mission as part of its outreach to those in need.

Expanding into Schools work
The other area of work undertaken by the mission during this time was the development of a work in schools. Starting with delivering Christian and PSHE assemblies, Chris cultivated relationships with schools, that then invited him to contribute to their religious education programmes. This developed into the “Question of Faith” workshops – day long sessions for a whole year group in a primary school, designed to assist the school staff in delivery of the Christian parts of the primary R.E. curriculum.

In November 2019 Chris Davis stepped down as City Missioner to take up the role of Minister at Colne Avenue Baptist Church. Duncan House took on the leadership at SCM, first as General manager, before becoming the CEO.