Church of the Sacred Heart, and attached Presbytery, Southwold, Suffolk

Summary

A Roman Catholic Church and its attached presbytery, built in 1914-16 to the designs of Father Benedict Williamson and John Henry Beart Foss.

Description

Building: A Roman Catholic church and its attached presbytery.

Date: 1914-16.

Architect: Father Benedict Williamson in collaboration with John Henry Beart Fosse.

Materials: Brick faced in Weldon stone.

Plan: The church is rectangular, oriented roughly north to south (rather than liturgically oriented. Liturgical orientation has been used throughout this report). The attached presbytery, which is roughly square on plan, is attached at the south-east. There is a square Baptistry attached to the south-west of the church.

Exterior:
The church has a gabled roof, with a squared-off tower to the east above the sanctuary. The main frontage beside Wymering Road to the west has a large perpendicular style window above a segmental-headed door, within a moulded rectangular door frame. The apex of the gable is topped by a wheel-headed finial cross. Attached to the right (west) corner is the single-storey baptistry with a kneelered gable end to the west.

The nave has five bays, the north elevation has five windows at high level, with curvilinear tracery, the west bay has a segmental-headed door. To the east is the two-stage tower, with a perpendicular style window designed to flood the sanctuary with light from the east at Matins without glare. The upper stage of the tower has louvred belfry windows with curvilinear tracery.

The east elevation of the tower has a centrally-positioned polygonal stair turret, entered by a segmental headed door in its east side. The stair turret has slit windows and blind curvilinear tracery to the top stage, which rises above the parapet.

The attached two-storey presbytery faces east and has symmetrical, mullioned windows to both storeys, set in canted bays. Between the bays is a segmental-headed front door with a trefoil headed paired window immediately to its right (north), both with hoodmoulds, Above the door, to the upper storey, is an empty niche with a projecting support and canopy, flanked by narrow, mullioned windows.

The south gable-end has a projecting chimney stack. To the west the presbytery is attached to the nave by the single-storey flat-roofed sacristy and has a further two-storey range to the south-west which has an attached single storey range, both ranges have kneelered gables.

Interior:
The church is entered through a timber draught lobby with a pair of doors with leaded glazing. On the north wall above the draught lobby, either side of the window is a small set of organ pipes.

To the right of the main doors, on the south-west corner, is a wide stone archway leading into the baptistry. There are trefoil-headed windows one each in the east and west wall and two in the south wall, with plain glass in leaded lights. The octagonal stone font is situated in the centre of the baptistry.

The nave is open to the king post roof structure. There are moulded stone corbels beneath the end of each tie-beam.

The nave has five bays expressed by the five windows each side in the Decorated style, set high up, above a continuous string course. The glass is plain except for bright dot motifs on the windows in the liturgical colours. There are fixed pews with square ends.

There is a pointed, moulded stone sanctuary arch, also supporting the tower above. The sanctuary has a panelled, painted ceiling, with a removable panel to allow for hauling items up into the tower. There are four very small rectangular, recessed windows in the east wall and a large Perpendicular style window in the south elevation lighting the sanctuary from the side. There is a painting fixed to the east wall: a copy of Veronese’s Holy Family with the Child Baptist, Tobias and the Angel, which has a fixed moulded and painted surround above and to the sides. In the south wall is a trefoil arched piscina, and in the north an aumbry. There are stone, alabaster-topped, arched altar rails to either side of the sanctuary entrance. The floor is white and black tiled. There is a stone stepped plinth on which the altar is placed, with a plain stone reredos behind it.

Either side of the sanctuary arch are small stone altars with Gothic mouldings and blind tracery. The altar on the north side dates from 1923 and is also a war memorial, and that on the west is the Lady altar.

A four-centred arched, panelled double door leads to the sacristy, which in turn leads to the presbytery. The presbytery contains some original doors with leaded glass panels. Upstairs is a room with an arched opening looking down into the sanctuary, and a squint for observing the nave.

History

England’s many medieval churches had been built for a Roman Catholic mode of worship (the Latin rite). Elizabeth I’s 1559 Act of Uniformity rendered them all part of the Church of England and outlawed the Catholic Mass. The following two centuries imposed upon a diminishing minority of Catholic worshippers in England severe civil inequalities, public suspicion and periods of outright persecution. Aside from a small number of private chapels and foreign embassies, there were very few buildings dedicated to Catholic worship.

The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 permitted the first new generation of Catholic places of worship to be built in England and Wales since the Reformation. They were forbidden to feature bells or steeples and were typically small, classically or domestically detailed, and were often hidden or set back from public view. The 1829 Act of Emancipation removed most remaining inequalities from Catholic worship and was accompanied by a growing architectural confidence. By the 1840s A W N Pugin’s vision of the Gothic revival as a recovery of England’s Catholic medieval inheritance fuelled stylistic debate and inspired new design for both Catholics and wider society. In 1850 Pope Pius X ‘restored’ the role of bishops, cathedrals and dioceses in England, inviting even grander architectural projects.

There was a significant expansion in the numbers of Catholics in England between 1850 (around 700,000), 1911 (around 1.7m) and 1941 (2.7m). This increase was accompanied by the development of a new Catholic parish system in 1908, by the construction of convents, monasteries, schools and social institutions, and by landmark buildings such as Westminster Cathedral (consecrated 1910).

Though the First and Second World Wars had some short-term impacts on the rate of expansion, the boom in schools, new towns, suburbs and housing estates in the 1950s and 60s saw more Catholic churches built in England than at any time since the Reformation. During that period the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) introduced profound reforms to the Catholic church, including architectural changes informed by the Liturgical movement. Key changes include saying the Mass in languages other than Latin, and the reordering of churches to reflect a greater ecumenism and communality of worship.

Roman Catholic worship at Southwold is known to have begun in the 1870s, when masses were celebrated monthly at various private addresses. 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, which seated about fifty. 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, listed at Grade II (NHLE 1208940). After Mr Crimmen and his brother promised funding, the Bishop of Northampton appointed the Reverend Henry St Leger Mason as mission priest in 1899.

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 site of the present church on the common was bought in 1902 from a Colonel ET Hughes with a £400 anonymous donation, and Father Mason launched an unsuccessful appeal for funds. In 1908, however, Miss Amy Auld, a wealthy Catholic convert of Blythburgh told Father Mason that she would be leaving a substantial sum in her will but was willing to start paying an annual sum before her death. Father 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 (who was 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.

Father Benedict Williamson (1868 – 1948) was born William Edward Williamson in Hackney, East London. He trained as an architect with the practice Newman and Jacques in Stratford. He took the name Benedict when he was received into the Catholic church in 1896. In the First World War he became a chaplain on the Western Front. After the war he designed a number of churches for the Roman Catholic dioceses of Southwark and East Anglia.

Father Williamson designed the church at Southwold in collaboration with John Henry Beart Foss. Building began in spring 1914, and Father Williamson’s plans were exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. The contractor was H A King of Beccles. Father Mason laid the final stone of the tower on 10 November 1915, and the church was blessed and opened on 4 June 1916. The first Mass was celebrated on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 22 June 1916.

The altar of the Sacred Heart was constructed in 1923 as a war memorial and the stone pulpit was erected in front of it in the same 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 on 6 June 1956 and Southwold became a parish soon afterwards. 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.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of the Sacred Heart, Southwold, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic Interest:

* The building illustrates the continuation and revival of Roman Catholic worship in Southwold and its expansion in the early C20;

Architectural Interest:

* As a highly successful example of innovative spatial planning applied to the combined plans of the church and presbytery, seen especially in the upper oratory, the result of much thoughtful composition from the architect and priest Fr Benedict Williamson and John Henry Beart Foss;

* The building includes high-quality work inspired by medieval styles including Perpendicular Gothic and curvilinear window tracery and a king-post roof structure;

* The building has dramatic landscape qualities enhanced by the vertical emphasis of the tower and its engaged turret.

External Links

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