In 1825 Fr Robert Willson took charge of the Nottingham mission, the congregation then numbering about 150. Three years later the church of St John the Evangelist in George Street was opened, built from designs by Edmund Willson of Lincoln, the brother of Fr Willson. This building survives today, in secular use.

With the growth of the Catholic population, a new and larger church became necessary. In 1841 Fr Willson acquired a site of 10,000 square yards, prominently located on the outskirts of the town alongside the Derby Road. The cost of site acquisition together with the building of a church and presbytery was estimated at £20,000, towards which the Earl of Shrewsbury gave £7,000 and the Revd Waldo Sibthorpe, an Anglican convert, £2,000. Shrewsbury’s protégé A.W.N. Pugin was appointed architect and on 10 November 1842 the foundation stone was laid by Bishop Nicholas Wiseman, assistant to Bishop Walsh, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District. The builders were Myers and Co. of London, Pugin’s favoured builders.

In 1842 Fr Willson was appointed first Bishop of Hobart, Australia, arriving there on 11 May 1844. He was therefore not present for the consecration of his Nottingham church, which took place later that year on 27 August. The ceremonial was led by Bishop Wiseman, who came with relics of St Barnabas, brought from Rome. At the time of its opening, this was the largest Catholic church built in England since the Reformation. Pugin’s presbytery was occupied from 1844 and his nearby convent buildings for the Sisters of Mercy followed in 1846.

With the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 St Barnabas’ became the cathedral church of the newly-established Diocese of Nottingham, and the first Bishop, Joseph Hendren, was enthroned here in December 1851.

Under Bishop Bagshawe (third Bishop of Nottingham, 1874-1901), the Italianate tastes of the London Oratory were introduced, somewhat at odds with the full-blown Gothic character of Pugin’s Cathedral. Gothic vestments were banned, Mozart and Gounod were more likely to be sung than plainchant, the gates to Pugin’s rood screen were removed and marble altar rails were introduced. Further changes took place under the fourth Bishop, Robert Brindle (1901-15). Pugin’s rood screen was removed from the sanctuary and re-erected at the west end. A new high altar was introduced, along with an Austrian oak bishop’s throne given by the King of Spain.

This trend was put into reverse by the fifth Bishop, Thomas Dunn (1916-31), who introduced the daily recitation of the Divine Office by the cathedral clergy and gave a more prominent place to the use of plainchant in the liturgy, as encouraged by Pope St Pius X. Bishop Dunn set out his programme for restoring the Puginian character of the cathedral in a letter published in the Diocesan Yearbook for 1925 (84-85). Employing F.A. Walters as his architect, the high altar installed by Bishop Brindle (which Dunn described as ‘enough to make the angels weep by its unsightliness’) was replaced, the rood beam was restored to its original place, and Italianate altars were removed from the transepts. A shrine to St Joseph was set up in the north transept, from designs by J. Sydney Brocklesby ‘of medieval style, richly gilt, and picked out in glowing colours’ (Diocesan Yearbook, 1924, 71).

Bishop Brindle’s successor, John Francis McNulty moved away from Cathedral House, establishing the property in Cavendish Road East as the Bishop’s House. He continued Bishop Dunn’s sympathetic work in the cathedral, being responsible for the redecoration and restoration of the Blessed Sacrament chapel largely to Pugin’s original designs, by Alphege Pippet in 1933 (as a memorial to Bishop Dunn).

Bishop Edward Ellis was the seventh Bishop of Nottingham, from 1944 to 1974, seeing the diocese through the post-war years and the upheaval that followed in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The stained glass had been removed from the cathedral for safety during the war, and a decision was taken not to reinstate the Pugin/Wailes glass in the transepts and at the west end but to replace it with new, lighter glass designed by Joseph Nuttgens (c1948). In 1951 the crypt, the burial place of several bishops, was renovated in memory of Bishop McNulty, with a new entrance and steps formed on the north side. At about the same time, new oak confessionals in Gothic style were added at the west end of the aisles, designed and made by R. Bridgeman of Lichfield.

In 1962 there was a major internal reordering (Architects Weightman & Bullen of Liverpool and York). The oak cathedra was removed and a new one installed in the position previously occupied by the high altar. The latter was replaced with a new Portland stone high altar on a white marble extension to the sanctuary under the tower. The rood beam and figures of St Mary and St John on either side of the suspended crucifix were removed. Timber screens were removed from the entrances to the ambulatories and new mahogany benches replaced the original pitch pine pews (some of which ended up at St Hugh’s, Bilborough, qv). The interior was redecorated in lighter colours and new lighting installed. These works reflected the taste of the times and anticipated the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, convening at that time. The Buildings of England wrote: ‘The whole effect could hardly be further from the richness of decoration and atmosphere that Pugin intended’.

In 1969 a flat-roofed extension to Cathedral House was built from designs by Peter Bartlett of Bartlett & Gray of West Bridgford. This was to house accommodation for the Daughters of Divine Charity, who looked after the cathedral and Cathedral House.

In 1977 the Cathedral Hall was rebuilt from designs by Richard Eberlin FRIBA, largely replacing a previous hall built in 1898. Extending into the cathedral garden, this has an octagonal form, designed to evoke a medieval chapter house.

A further major reordering of the cathedral took place in 1993, under Bishop McGuiness, to mark the 150th anniversary of the church (architects Smith & Roper of Buxton). This involved a new high altar, lectern, sanctuary seating and cathedra, and the reinstatement of the rood figures of St Mary and St John. Level changes were reduced and new doors fitted at the main entrance, along with a ramp in the northern ambulatory, to allow for improved circulation. A new font was installed at the east end of the south aisle and a new encaustic tile floor laid throughout. Some of Pugin’s previously covered painted decoration was reinstated, notably the roundels in the spandrels of the nave and transepts. At the west end new confessionals rooms were formed from the oak of three smaller former confessionals. These works too reflected their times, marking a move away from the iconoclasm of the 1960s towards a renewed respect for Pugin’s original design intention.

The most recent significant addition has been the tomb in the northern ambulatory housing the translated remains of the Venerable Mary Potter, founder in Nottingham of the Little Company of Mary. This was designed by Smith & Roper with carving by John Shaw of Lincolnshire. In 2017 the remains of Bishop Willson, who had died in 1866 on a return trip to Nottingham, were exhumed from the crypt and reinterred in Tasmania.

Description

The church is built in the Early English Gothic style, chosen primarily for reasons of economy, and modelled in part on the Cistercian Abbey of Croxton, Staffordshire, founded by one of Lord Shrewsbury’s ancestors, with the plan ‘strictly from the Large parochial churches of Nottinghamshire’ (letter from Pugin to Lord Shrewsbury).

Although the largest post-Reformation Catholic church in England at the time of its construction, the dimensions are not great by cathedral standards (it was not of course originally built as a cathedral). However, the 150ft spire is given greater prominence by the location of the building on an elevated site on the edge of the city centre. The other main dimensions are as follows: 190ft from east to west; transepts are 83 by 20ft and 34ft high; the nave is 76ft by 22ft, the aisles each 15ft 6ins wide; the choir 37 by 22ft.

The list description (below) offers a fairly full account of the cathedral. However, the following features are not mentioned:

• The crypt. This lies below the retrochoir and is reached by a flight of steps formed from the northern ambulatory in 1951. It has a vaulted roof and is the burial place of several bishops.
• The organ in the north ambulatory dates from 1913 and is by Norman & Beard, incorporating some pipework from an earlier organ by Gray & Davison. It was refurbished by Hill, Norman & Beard in 1989.
• The Portland stone statue of St Hugh in the southeast chapel has been variously attributed to Eric Gill or Joseph Cribb, a pupil of Gill, but is by the Catholic sculptor Philip Lindsey Clarke. It was made in 1949 for St Hugh’s College, Tollerton, the junior diocesan seminary (Diocesan yearbook, 1950, p.116). A companion statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary made for St Hugh’s College is now at St Peter and St Paul, Lincoln (qv).
• The brass memorial to Bishop Brindle in floor of the south sanctuary aisle is by F. A. Walters, c.1921.
• The canopy to Walters’ high altar is now suspended high over the forward altar, at the crossing.

Entry amended by AHP 14.09.23

List description

GV II*

Roman Catholic church, created a cathedral in 1851. 1841-44. By Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin for John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, and Ambrose Philipps de Lisle. Altered late C19, 1927, 1962. Restored 1933 and c1990. Ashlar with slate roofs. Gothic Revival style.

PLAN: cruciform plan, nearly symmetrical, with crossing tower and spire.

EXTERIOR: plinth, coped gables with crosses. Windows are mainly plain lancets. Choir with eastern chapel and side chapels, crossing and transepts, nave with aisles and 3 porches. East end has a projecting central gable with 3  graduated lancets. Side chapels have single lancets to east and 2 lancets to the returns. Choir has a round east window with plate tracery, and 3 pairs of lancets to the clerestory. Side chapels have buttresses to east, and 3 lancets. Transepts have buttresses to east, and very tall triple lancets with quatrefoils above, all with hood moulds. Organ chamber, to north-east, has 2 lancets. Blessed Sacrament chapel, to south east, has 3 lancets. sacristy corridor, to south east, linked to adjoining presbytery. Square crossing tower, 2 stages, has a recessed bell stage with two 2-light pointed arched openings with moulded surrounds. Octagonal broach spire with diagonal buttresses containing niches. Between them, single lucarnes. Nave has 5 pairs of clerestory lancets. West end has clasping buttresses and a moulded doorcase with hood mould and triple shafts. Above it, a triple lancet and quatrefoils. Aisles have 4 side lancets and single west windows. Off-centre porches with moulded pointed arched doorways.

INTERIOR: Pugin’s decorative scheme was never completed, and was further reduced late C19 and 1962. The Blessed Sacrament (SE) chapel was restored to Pugin’s design by Alphege Pippet in 1933. Redecorated 1971-74. Double chamfered arches throughout. Choir has arch braced roof, and arcades with quatrefoil piers, 3 bays, with wooden screens. East end has a moulded double arch with octagonal pier. West arch, flanked by figures in niches, has a hanging crucifix by Pugin. Crypt, 3 bays, has segmental pointed arches on round piers, and contains the tombs of 5 bishops. Blessed Sacrament chapel has elaborate stencilled decoration. North arcade, 3 bays, with wooden screen. Arch braced roof with wall shafts and angel corbels. East end has a baldacchino with marble pillars and cusped arch, under a gable. Windows have stained glass, that to south designed by Pugin and made by Wailes. Central east chapel has arch and screen on each side, aumbry, piscina and sedilia to east, and ashlar blind arcade at east end. North and south chapels are similar, without sedilia. All have scissor braced roofs. Ambulatory, 3 bays, has shrine with figure on bracket, and door to Presbytery at south end. Crossing has an arcaded corbel table with 4 pointed arched openings above it, and cross beam ceiling. Transepts have stained glass windows. On the east sides, pointed arches into the organ chamber and south- east chapel. Nave has arcades, 5 bays, with octagonal piers, double clerestory windows and strutted king post roof with collar purlins. Aisles have lean to roofs and eastern arches. Fittings include C19 square font on round columns. Other fittings mid and late C20. Aisle windows have stained glass by Pugin. Transepts have stained glass, mid C20, by Nuttgens. No memorials of special interest.

Attached boundary wall, ashlar with gabled coping, bordering Derby Road and North Circus Street. Approx 60m x 40m.

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A small church dedicated to St Mary was opened on Park Street in Alfreton in 1883. In 1923 an appeal was launched for funds to build a new church on a plot on Nottingham Road. The new building opened in 1927, and has claims to be the first new church dedicated to Christ the King (a feast instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925). The parish priest Fr Joseph Heald was responsible for the design. The front elevation was an attractive design, with shaped gables and a wide tetrasyle stone portico with Tuscan columns. It was approached by an avenue, and a large crucifix was placed in front. The building was illustrated in  The Tablet (24 September 1927), where the account also states:

‘The altar of the new church is of solid stone, without gradines or other adornment, standing in front of a small apse. The pallium altaris, in correct liturgical fashion, covers the altar both front and back. The cross and candlesticks were presented to the church in the Holy Year by His Eminence Cardinal Merry del Val.’

In 1982 the original design was spoilt by the rebuilding of the shaped gable as a plain experimented gable and replacement of the portico with a long narthex. At the same time a large new social centre and parish hall was built next to the church.

Description

The church is a very plain building of brick with an added narthex clad in random coursed stone. A statue of Christ the King is set beside the entrance which is sheltered by a plain canopy. The church is lit by plain round-arched windows with clear glass. The narthex is a utilitarian space with glazed doors into the main body of the church. The interior is simply appointed with an open timber roof, a tall blank arched recess at the east end and a two-bay arcade on the north side of the sanctuary linking it to a Lady Chapel. The forward altar was covered with photographs etc, and it was not clear whether it was that of 1927, described in the account above. A crucifix hangs in the sanctuary and there is a plaster statue of the Virgin behind a timber altar in the Lady Chapel.

Amended by AHP 26.01.2021

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The church is on the site of an earlier building, possibly on land given by the Earl of Shrewsbury. The exact date is not known with certainty, but it may have been put up in the 1840s or before. This building was described as a ‘dingy old edifice’ in the Derby Mercury (27 August 1888). It was pulled down and replaced by the present church in 1888, from designs by ‘Mr Simpson’ of Bradford’, presumably Edward Simpson. Kelly’s Directory mentions ‘an altar of alabaster, designed and constructed by the donor, Major-General F. Hercy; in 1900 an oaken pulpit was carved and presented by Col. Hercy; the church affords 120 sittings’.

The church was reorientated in the 1970s, and a transeptal extension added to the north in 2005, from designs by Anthony Short & Partners. At the same time a car park was created along the frontage.

Description

All Saints is a modest building of brick with a porch at the west end, three pairs of lancet windows along the south side, a short southwest bellcote and a presbytery attached on the east side. The porch gives to a narrow narthex with two arched openings to the nave. This is very simply treated, with an open timber roof. The bench seating is of simple design and was turned around to face north during a reorientation of the interior which took place during the 1970s. The building was skilfully extended to the north by Anthony Short & Partners in 2005. The new space flows from the old interior, brightly lit by a clerestory window. The altar was moved into the extension and placed against the north wall. The altar is of Derbyshire alabaster and was given in 1900 by Major-General and Colonel Hercy, who have been credited with the design. It has been split to form a forward altar. The altar is flanked by statues on pedestals.

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In the late nineteenth century the Catholic congregation of Ashby worshipped in a temporary church in Prior Park Road. It is said that Flora Hastings, Duchess of Norfolk and daughter of the Countess of Loudon left a bequest of jewellery to be sold for the purpose of building a church at her death in 1887. Her husband, the fifteenth Duke of Norfolk, commissioned the architect F. A. Walters to provide the design. The site was purchased in 1910 and the foundation stone was laid in August 1913. Building was interrupted by the war and by the death of the Duke in 1917 but the church was finished and in use by 1920. Walters’s original drawings for the church are in the Duke of Norfolk’s archives at Arundel Castle.

In 1936 five stained glass windows (three in the chancel and two on either side of the altar in the Lady Chapel) were installed from designs by Patrick Feeny of Hardman & Co., the gift of the late Miss Annie Wood Redfern.

The presbytery was built in 1956.

Description

See list description below (the description is brief, and inaccurate on several points). The plan of the church comprises a nave, south aisle, southwest baptistery, southeast tower with a porch on its west side, apsidal ended sanctuary flanked by two apsidal chapels and  a rectangular sacristy and choir room attached to the northeast chapel. The building material is Weldon stone throughout, with roof coverings of Swithland slate. The church is in the Romanesque style, doubtless derived from French models with which Walters was very familiar, and is scholarly in both massing and detail.

The tall gabled west end has flat pilaster buttresses and a slightly projecting gabled porch with round headed doorway on attached shafts and a doorway with a double shafted surround. Above the porch are two round headed windows with a stone wheel window in the gable. The side walls are divided into bays by pilaster strips with round headed clerestorey windows and a corbel table. The aisles have lean-to roofs while the baptistery has a separate ridge roof. The east end of the church is an elaborate composition. The tall square tower has three tiers of round headed arches and a short leaded spire. Attached to the east side of the tower is a plain apsidal chapel which is balanced by a similar chapel on the other side of the tall and elaborately ornamented apsidal sanctuary.

The interior walls are bare stone. A narrow south aisle is divided from the nave by a five bay arcade with wide round headed arches on alternate cylindrical and clustered piers with scalloped capitals and waterleaf bases. The clerestorey windows on both sides are set in broad shafted rere-arches. Over the nave is a timber barrel vaulted ceiling carried on stone principal arches which are brought down onto stone wall shafts. The aisle has a stone demi-vaulted ceiling. At the east end of the nave is a tall round-headed arch with jamb shafts, chevron ornament and three blind windows above it opening into the main chancel space which has a stone groin vault. Beyond another tall arch is an apsidal sanctuary with small windows high in the wall set in deep, shafted rere-arches. On either side are small apsidal chapel.

The east end of the church was reordered in 1997. The architects for the work were Stone Ecclesiastical of Bristol. The original high altar and retable of Portland stone remain against the east wall but the elaborate timber baldacchino painted with the arms of the Norfolk and Hastings families was brought forward to shelter the new altar. The Romanesque-style stone font originally in the southwestern baptistery has now been brought forward into the vestibule of the northeast Lady Chapel. Above the main west door (now partly hidden by a modern timber draught lobby) is a carved inscription recording the generosity of the benefactress. The stained glass windows in the sanctuary were installed in 1936 and made by Patrick Feeny of Hardmans; they are a twentieth century re-interpretation of twelfth century stained glass. Most of the windows in the church are clear glazed. The oak benches in the nave are presumably original.

List description

II GV

1908-15. Architect F Walters. Norman style. Stone with corbelled eaves and tiled roof. Bands and horizontal bands, windows thus appear set in recessed panels. 3 eastern apses; centre with blind arcaded band below windows. Large south-eastern tower with short spire above. All windows round arched. Prominent landmark in this part of Ashby.

Listing NGR: SK3559016561

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Bakewell is mentioned in Domesday, and its market charter originated in the thirteenth century. There is a medieval parish church and the place was an important market town. It later became a minor spa promoted by the Duke of Rutland who partly rebuilt the centre  around  1800.  Not  long afterwards,  Arkwright  built  a  mill  and attendant workers’ housing sprang up. The character of a stone-built market town has largely been preserved, and the place is a popular tourist destination and the administrative centre of the National Park.

Until the late nineteenth century, Catholics living in Bakewell would travel the three miles or so to Hassop to attend Mass. In 1889 Fr James Browne, newly arrived at Hassop, took a seven-year lease from the Duke of Rutland for a garden in Granby Road, Bakewell ‘for the purpose of erecting a removable iron church’ (Brian Cain, Temple in the Peaks, the Story of All Saints Church Hassop, 2018). Such buildings, known as ‘tin tabernacles’, were built by all denominations in the second half of the nineteenth century when there was a need to erect a place of worship quickly and cheaply. This one was built to seat 105, at a cost of £168.12s.0d. (including rail delivery, but excluding foundations, heating and lighting). The church opened in 1890 and was registered for worship in 1905. The lease was renewed several times until 1922, when the site was purchased by the Diocese of Nottingham. The chapel continued in use until 1948, when its condition was such that the diocese decided to purchase a former Congregational Chapel on Buxton Road. The site of the tin tabernacle was sold to Bakewell Urban District Council, and is now a car park.

Description

The church is orientated roughly north-south, but this account assumes conventional liturgical orientation, i.e. as if the altar was to the east.

On plan the church consists of a single volume, with an aisleless nave and sanctuary under one continuous ridge, and with a sacristy over a (sealed) staircase to the north. There is a gallery at the west end of the nave. The church is raised over a basement, originally built as a schoolroom.

The church is set back from the road behind a low stone boundary wall with piers surmounted by balls at either end (more classical than gothic in character, these may predate the church and relate to the previous chapel on the site). The church is in gothic style, built from local limestone ashlar blocks under slate roofs. At the west end a tall gabled western bay entrance bay projects slightly, with a round-arched entrance to the former schoolroom in the basement, tall lancet window above and a small vesica in the gable. The entrance to the church is on the eastern return of this projecting bay, via a boarded door in a pointed arch opening. This is approached by a flight of stone steps with an ashlar side wall, its underside pierced by two lancet openings. The basement has paired plain lancet window openings in each bay. Above this, the church appears to sit on a high plinth, with gabled pilaster buttresses at the angles and marking the bay divisions. A chamfered sill band runs around the building, above which tall lancets (one per bay) light the main body of the church. The side walls have a moulded eaves cornice, shaped kneelers and moulded gable copings; the projecting western bay has a roll finial to the front gable. At the east end taller buttresses flank stepped triple lancet windows beneath a louvred vesica. The centre part of the gable is raised as a parapet, suggesting a nave and aisles; it is surmounted by a decorative carved finial.

The interior is a single volume with plain plastered and painted walls and fitted carpets. There is a perimeter timber dado, boarded at the sides and panelled at the east end. The finest feature is the roof structure, which appears to be of painted timber but may incorporate cast iron elements. It has four decorative queen-post trusses springing from corbelled wall posts, with gothic panels and arched braces with mouchettes and pendants. The central section of the ceiling is flat and plastered. The lancet windows are set in deep splayed reveals. Those in the nave have mottled glass in diamond panes, with opening hoppers to some of the lights. The triple-light east window has opaque glass in diamond quarries, with red borders. A gallery at the west end has is supported on two cast iron columns of cruciform section. The underside of the gallery has been enclosed with a glazed screen in the late twentieth century to form a narthex/vestibule. At some point the stair to the gallery has been removed and it is now only accessible by ladder. A WC has been formed in the entrance area close to the previous location of the gallery stair. The gallery has been refronted with wooden panels, probably at the same time as the glazing in of the underside, but the gothic iron railings of the original gallery front appear to survive behind this. The sacristy gives off the north side of the sanctuary, via a modern flush door within a pointed arch. From the sacristy side there is evidence of a relieving arch, or possibly of a larger opening to the church. From the sacristy a stone stair (now sealed) originally led down to the schoolroom.

The former schoolroom has a lobby area at the west end corresponding to the gallery area above, and steps down to a large single space with cast iron columns supporting the structure above (augmented by additional columns for floor strengthening).

*Entry amended and expanded 2.1.2021, using photographs and extracts from a report prepared by AHP for the Diocese of Nottingham in March 2019*

List description

GV II

Church. 1849. Ashlar sandstone with rubble limestone to rear, slate roof. 1:4 bays; bay 1 projects and is gabled; single vessel raised over schoolroom. Orientated north-south (ritual orientation used in this description). EXTERIOR: gabled pilasters at angles and bay divisions; tall plinth with offset above pairs of lancet windows to the basement. Chamfered sill band to tall lancets which light the body of the church. Bay 1 gable has round-arched door; in plinth a lancet window and vesica. Pointed-arched door in right side approached by flight of steps with ashlar side wall and 2 lancet openings beneath. Eaves cornice, shaped kneelers and moulded gable copings; roll-finial to front gable. East end: taller buttresses flank a stepped 3-light window beneath louvred vesica. Centre part of gable raised as a parapet; carved apex finial. INTERIOR: west gallery; decorative queen-post trusses with Gothic Revival panels, arched braces with mouchettes and pendants. Originally built as the Congregational Church with schoolroom under.

Listing NGR: SK2169268654

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Miss Gladys Peet was received into the Catholic Church in the late 1920s and was at that time the only Catholic in the village. During the Second World War Mass was said at Bardney airfield (closed in 1945). The large sugar beet factory (opened in 1927) brought in Irish Catholic migrant workers. Land was purchased towards the end of the war and ‘an old poultry hut’ converted into the chapel. Fittings were acquired from chapel of the US forces base at nearby Nocton Hall.

Description

A humble wooden building on a red brick base, though a little grander than the ‘old poultry hut’ implies. Rectangular plan with a small gabled porch. The walls are clad in vertical tongue and groove boarding. Rectangular windows with opaque glass. Neat interior, the small sacristy and confessional screened off behind the altar. No fittings of particular note, although the Stations of the Cross have a naïve charm and are said to have been made by Italian prisoners of war, as was the crib stored in the sacristy.

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In 1842 Fr James Taylor took up residence at no. 9 Priestgate, where a chapel was established, served from Melwood on the Isle of Axholme. Until 1938 this residence served as the base for the mission, which from 1848 until 1949 was served by Benedictines from Ampleforth.

In 1927 Bardney Hall (a fine Georgian house in Whitecross Street) was acquired by Rosminian Sisters to serve as a school. They offered the paddock lying to the north of the house, on the corner of Whitecross Street and Barrow Road, as the site for a permanent church. The foundation stone of the church of St Augustine of Canterbury was laid in 1936, the east end (tower and sanctuary with sacristies etc) of which was completed and opened in 1938. A presbytery was built at the same time. The architect was J.H. Beart Foss FRIBA of London.

Funds to complete the church being scarce, and since the sanctuary was large enough to accommodate the congregation, the nave was never built. In the 1980s a high repair bill led to a decision to demolish this church. It was replaced by a smaller and much more utilitarian design, opened in 1988. The 1938 presbytery was retained and is currently let, the parish now being served from Brigg. The new church is dedicated to St Augustine Webster, a Carthusian from Melrose Abbey who was martyred under Henry VIII and canonised in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Description

A simple church hall-like design, of red brick (with grey vertical bands on the west (liturgical east) wall, and with a steep, concrete pantiled roof. Only the crucifix attached to this wall and the slender fleche on the ridge denote an ecclesiastical function. The interior is utilitarian in character, the only furnishings of particular note being three new stained glass windows at the (liturgical) east end, depicting the Pelican in her Piety flanked by St Augustine Webster and St Theresa of Lisieux.

The 1938 presbytery is an attractive design of its time in brick, with its original door and entrance canopy. However, it has been somewhat marred by uPVC window replacement. The red brick boundary wall looks to be contemporary with Bardney Hall; on the stretch facing Whitecross Street there is an attractive wooden gate with open quatrefoils in the upper panels.

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Belper has a long history of nail-making, an industry with medieval origins. Considerable expansion took place from the late eighteenth century with the advent of cotton mills, and the place went on to become a significant industrial centre. There was a Catholic church here by 1857, when a school and chapel were established by the Sisters of Mercy. These closed within a few years (the convent was demolished in 1863) and worship subsequently took place in a series of private houses.

The parish was established in 1909 and ten years later the stables and coach house to Gibfield House in Gibfield Lane, together with about half an acre of land, were acquired and a church and priest’s house built. The architect J. Sydney Brocklesby used the stone from the old buildings in the new church. As described in the Diocesan Yearbook for 1921, the church had an altar of Derbyshire grit stone with a low relief carving of the Last Supper on the frontal and alabaster columns in the throne. The contractor was Lehane of Darley Dale. The church was opened and solemnly consecrated by Bishop Dunn in December 1919.

Description

The church is a simple building of local stone with plain arched windows with clear glass. The (presumably originally slate) roof has been re-covered in concrete tiles. The church is entered via an archway and steps up to the (liturgical) west end. The south side of the building is a hall and meeting room. The northern half has been reorientated, with the altar positioned against the south wall and bench seating arranged to face it on three sides. The furnishings include pitch pine benches and ambo, and a simple stone altar. The plaster has been removed to dado level along the north wall, probably at the time of post-Vatican II reordering.

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Mass was said in Birstall from 1938, served by the Rosminians from Ratcliffe College. A small plot of land in Weld Lane was purchased in 1939 and a simple hall/chapel erected in 1940 by Messrs Harlow Bros of Long Whatton, Leics.  This was replaced by the present building on a different site in 1988.

Description

St Theresa’s church is a building in modern style, faced with red brick laid in stretcher bond and with roof coverings of artificial slate. The body of the church is rectangular and of one storey; the walls are punctuated by double brick buttresses, with groups of three windows in each bay on the front elevation and a blind return wall. The main church has a mansard-type roof with deep eaves and in the centre of the main front a large front porch or narthex under its own steeply-pitched roof. Attached to the right hand side of the church is an integral hall.

The interior is a large simple rectangular space with the altar in the centre of the long wall opposite the main entrance and the seating arranged fanwise. Almost all the windows are on the entrance side and the sanctuary area is lit principally by artificial light.

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The nineteenth century saw the expansion of Bolsover from a picturesque market town, dominated by its Castle, to an important mining centre. This brought in some Catholic workers, for whom in 1903 a wooden hut in High Street was acquired as a Mass centre, served from Shirebrook. In 1942 a new Mass centre opened briefly in an upper room in the Market Place, but in the following year a property at no.59 High Street was acquired and an adjacent stone barn fitted up as a chapel. This remained in use until 1967 when the present church was opened, built from designs by John Rochford & Partner of Sheffield and Manchester, seating 197 and costing £20,000. The barn continued to be used as a parish social centre, until sold in 2005 to fund renovation here and at Shirebrook. The church was renovated in 2007. It continues to be served from Shirebrook (qv).

Description

The church is roughly orientated north-south, but this description follows conventional liturgical orientation, i.e. as if the altar faced east.

The church is situated on a confined site in the centre of the village adjacent to the old barn which previously served as the church. It is a simple rectangle on plan, comprising a nave and sanctuary, with the sacristies, confessional, baptistery and side altar on the north side. It has an asymmetrical roof with a raised clerestorey on the south (geographical northwest) side. It is stone faced, with a stone slate roof. The main west front has an asymmetrical arrangement of windows, possibly ultimately inspired by Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp, and a projecting porch with entrance at the side. A stone boundary wall encloses the entrance approach.

The main space of the interior is a single undivided space, the walls plastered except for the east wall, which is left as bare coursed stone. The entrance area and the sanctuary are placed right of the centre line of the church, and the main circulation alley likewise, flanked by longer benches on the north side and shorter ones to the south. The roof has horizontal trusses and a timber boarded soffit, with the raised clerestory in the roof the main source of light. The sanctuary is side-lit on the north side. Marble font in the northeast corner of the nave with circular stem and bowl. Other furnishings include a figure of the Risen Christ on the east wall, a panel of the Our Lady’s apparition at Lourdes at the west end and a good set of Stations of the Cross on the side walls, all in bronze fibreglass, by Alan Rochford, brother of the architect.

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