 Portsea , covering much of the town of Portsmouth , was a dockside parish of around 40 @,@ 000 inhabitants with a mixture of housing ranging from neat terraces to squalid slums . The large , recently rebuilt church held more than 2 @,@ 000 people . Lang arrived in June 1896 to lead a team of more than a dozen curates serving the five districts of the parish . He quickly resumed the kind of urban parish work he had carried out in Leeds ; he founded a Sunday afternoon men 's conference with 300 men , and supervised the construction of a large conference hall as a centre for parish activities . He also pioneered the establishment of parochial church councils long before they were given legal status in 1919 . Outside his normal parish duties , Lang served as chaplain to the local prison , and became acting chaplain to the 2nd Hampshire Royal Artillery Volunteer Corps . 
