A large Gothic Revival church of the 1850s in a Geometrical style of c.1300 by a well-known Catholic architect. It has an impressive, spacious interior with some fine fittings, including a G. F. Bodley organ case.

In 1855 Mrs Emily Sandys, the convert widow of an Anglican clergyman, opened a small school for Catholic children in a house in London Road. In February of the following year the Stroud mission began, served by the Dominicans of Woodchester. A new church was commenced in 1856, designed by the well-known Catholic architect Charles Alban Buckler, and opened on 20 August 1857, when Cardinal Wiseman preached. The church was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, a dogma which had only been formally defined in 1854. What we see today was intended to be the nave and aisles but the intended site of the sanctuary was encroached upon by the adjoining Dominican Convent of St Rose of Lima and its buildings. The orientation of the church was therefore reversed and the porch converted into the Sacred Heart chapel. The church was served by the Dominicans until 1944, when care of the parish transferred to the diocese.

The convent group was built from designs by Benjamin Bucknall and developed in stages from 1862, with the main buildings erected in 1867 and extended in 1882, and a fine chapel (based on the Ste Chapelle, Paris) added in 1888-94. The nuns moved away in 1976, donating the Bodley organ from their chapel to the Immaculate Conception church.

Description

Directions given here are liturgical. The church is much hemmed in by other buildings and is not easy to appreciate as a whole. It presents a tough exterior with rock-faced local stone. The style is based on the Geometrical architecture of about 1300. It is covered with slate roofs and has lean-to aisles. It has six-bays with a clerestory of small circular windows, a large eight-light window at what is now the east end, and a rose window at the opposite end.

Inside the quatrefoil piers are tall and slender and have foliage capitals and double-chamfered arches. The organ case of 1894 is from the former convent chapel of St Rose of Lima and was designed by the great High Church Anglican architect G. F. Bodley and made by Thomas Liddiatt of Stroud. The richly carved Stations of the Cross are of stone set in alabaster frames and, along with the Calvary, were the work of Alfred B. Wall of Cheltenham and date from 1887. The stained glass is mostly by Hardman & Co. of Birmingham and dates from 1887 with one earlier window of 1857 in the north aisle. Other Victorian features are the openwork pulpit, multi-shafted reredos, and the rich setting for the Sacred Heart statue at the entrance to the sanctuary. There is also unattractive abstract glass in the east window, said to represent the Annunciation, dating from of 1979 (maker unknown). Other modern abstract glass is placed in the aisles. The nave seating consists of modern open-backed pews.

List description

Church

Sacristy

Parish hall

Former convent

Heritage Details