A dramatically-placed church and presbytery by Fr Benedict Williamson of 1914-16, facing out to sea across the common. The big tower with its distinctive central stair turret rises above the sanctuary and the nave behind has a somewhat austere character, inside and out.

In the 1870s Masses were celebrated monthly at various private addresses in Southwold by the Rev. Arthur Job Wallace of St Mary, Ipswich, and his successors continued his initiative. In 1897 an Altar Society was founded and James Crimmen fitted out an extension to his home, the Manor House, to provide a chapel called St Peter’s Oratory (the extension survives at the private house called Manor Gate, comprising the former service range of the Manor House). This seated about fifty and was opened on 8 June 1897; the arcaded Gothic stone altar was designed by Mr Richards of Lowestoft (possibly the surveyor F.W. Richards, who later worked on Our Lady Star of the Sea, Lowestoft, qv). After Mr Crimmen and his brother promised funding, the Bishop of Northampton appointed the Rev. Henry St Leger Mason as mission priest in 1899 and he rented a house at 42 Stradbroke Road.

By 1901 the oratory was too small, particularly for summer congregations and the Crimmens were in financial difficulties. From 1902-16 services were held in the assembly rooms (now the library) on North Green, while a plot of land for a new church was sought. The stone altar was brought from the oratory chapel. The Rev. James Sloan’s history also reports the use at this time of a former Plymouth Brethren room in a fish net store in Black Mill Road. The site of the present church on the common was bought in 1902 from a Colonel E.T. Hughes with a £400 anonymous donation, and Fr Mason launched an unsuccessful appeal for funds. In 1908 he wrote to Bishop Keating of Northampton ‘I don’t think this Mission will ever be anything more than a visiting Summer Holiday place’. However, Miss Amy Auld, a wealthy Catholic convert of Blythburgh told Fr Mason that she would be leaving a substantial sum in her will, but was willing to start paying an annual sum before her death. Fr Mason must already have consulted the architect-priest Benedict Williamson, who in 1912 was considering building the church on an incremental basis. The bishop dissuaded him, not least because Miss Auld (now Sister Mary Vincent at East Bergholt Abbey) was in failing health. She died on 11 August 1912, leaving £3,000 for a church and priest’s house and £1,000 as an endowment for the mission.

Work began in spring 1914, and Fr Williamson’s plans were exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. The contractor, H.A. King of Beccles held his price despite the war, but there were inevitable difficulties with procuring materials and craftsmen. Fr Mason laid the final stone of the tower on 10 November 1915, the church was blessed and opened on 4 June 1916, and the first Mass was on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 22 June 1916. However it was not fully furnished; the altar of the Sacred Heart, a war memorial, was constructed in 1923 and a stone pulpit erected in front of it by Pentecost that year. On Christmas Eve 1924 the Lady altar was blessed and the east wall painting (a copy of Veronese’s Holy Family with the Child Baptist, Tobias and the Angel) was in position by the early 1920s. The other sanctuary painting, a copy of The Sleep of St John by Carlo Dolci, was given in 1975. The church was consecrated by Bishop Leo Parker on 6 June 1956 and Southwold became a parish soon afterwards.

At some point in the 1970s, the wooden altar was brought forward from the east wall and the iron gates removed from the stone altar rail, but otherwise no significant alterations have been made to the sanctuary. In 2015 a fabric inspection raised structural concerns for the tower and after a successful application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, repairs were carried out in 2018-19.

Entry amended by AHP, January 2023

Description

Please see list entry for the church and presbytery, revised and expanded in January 2023:

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1384451?section=official-list-entry

Heritage Details