Patrick Comerford
I have been in Bicester in Oxfordshire a few time in recent weeks. I often pass through the market town on my way to and from Oxford, but these were my first times to see its streets, architecture and church buildings, including Saint Edburg’s, the Church of England parish church, which dates back to a Saxon foundation.
The Church of the Immaculate Conception, the Roman Catholic parish church in Bicester, was built in the 1960s, and is a fine example of the work of the church architect Desmond Williams. He is one of the foremost interpreters of the Liturgical Movement, known for his striking modernist church buildings in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The church, close to where Causeway meets Church Street and almost opposite Saint Edburg’s Church, also has a large, powerful statue of the Virgin Mary on the façade, the work of the sculptor Mark Delf of Stafford.
There are few records of Roman Catholicism in Bicester until the 19th century, and its revival in Bicester has been attributed to the Hon William Henry John North (1836-1932), of Wroxton Abbey, near Banbury. North was the Master of the Bicester Hunt, and he made a concerted effort in 1869 to revive Roman Catholicism in Bicester.
North was a great-grandson of Lord North, George III’s Prime Minister during the American War of Independence, and he eventually became the 11th Lord North, through his mother’s inheritance. But he had immediate Irish ancestry on his father’s side of the family, and was descended from a week-known Doyle family in Co Kilkenny and Co Wexford, while his wife was directly related to a branch of the Comerford family in Ireland.
The future Lord North was born William Henry John Doyle in 1836. His father was Colonel John Doyle (1804-1894), MP for Oxfordshire (1852-1885), and his paternal grandfather was General Sir Charles William Doyle (1770-1842) from Bramblestown, Co Kilkenny.
Colonel John Doyle married Lady Susan North (1802-1884) in 1835. She was a daughter of George North (1757-1802), 3rd Earl of Guilford, and a granddaughter of the Prime Minister Lord North. She was also a niece of Frederick North (1766-1827), 5th Earl of Guilford, who secretly converted to Greek Orthodoxy in Corfu in 1791, and in 1824 established the Ionian Academy in Corfu, the first university in modern Greece.
When the fifth earl died in 1827, his estates, including Wroxton Abbey in Oxfordshire, devolved on Lady Susan North as his niece. She married John Doyle in 1835, and to perpetuate her family name and line, John Doyle, Lady Susan Doyle, and their children changed their name from Doyle to North in 1838. Three years later, one of her family titles was called out of abeyance and she became a peer in her own right in 1841 as the 10th Baroness North.
Lady Susan’s son and heir, William Henry John North, married Frederica Cockerell on 12 January 1858. Frederica’s mother, Teresa (Newcomen) Cockerell, was descended from a well-known banking family in Dublin and she was a second cousin of the Revd Patrick Comerford Law (1797-1807), while Frederica’s grandfather, Thomas Gleadowe-Newcomen (1776-1825), 2nd Lord Newcomen, was a first cousin of the poet Mary (Comerford) Boddington (1776-1840) and of Belinda Comerford who married the Revd Francis Law (1768-1807).
North kept in touch with his paternal Irish roots as an aide-de-camp to his wife’s stepfather, Archibald Montgomerie (1812-1861), 13th Earl of Eglinton, when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1858-1859.
To the surprise of their neighbours and family, Frederica and William North became Roman Catholics in 1867 and from then on, it is said, he divided his time between prayer, business and hunting – he was Master of the Bicester Hunt – and he encouraged the beginnings of the Roman Catholic parish in Bicester.
At North’s suggestion in 1869, Father Joseph Robson from Hethe, halfway between Bicester and Buckingham, celebrated Mass in the home of an Italian jeweller, Rocco Tenchio, whose wife took four children for catechism classes on Sunday afternoons.
Saint Mary’s, the first Catholic chapel and school in Bicester, opened with North’s support in Piggy Lane in 1883. When North inherited his mother’s title and estates as the 11th Lord North a year later in 1884, he introduced Catholic tenants, hired Catholic domestic staff, and started a Catholic orphanage.
The Revd Dr Philip Sweeney, also from Hethe, acquired land in King’s End in 1882, a Catholic school and chapel were opened on 19 March 1883, and the first Mass was celebrated there on Easter Day 25 March 1883.
Religious orders returned to Bicester in the early 20th century. Eight Benedictine nuns who fled religious persecution in France, settled in ‘South View’ in 1904. They later moved to Priory House in Priory Lane, and when they left in 1920 their chapel become Bicester’s Catholic church. Another French group, the Sacred Heart Fathers, lived at ‘The Limes’, and they too returned to France in 1920.
During the years leading up to World War II, the Servite Fathers in Hethe and the Franciscans in Buckingham served Bicester’s Catholics and in 1931 Bicester was again served from Hethe with Father Ignatius McHugh.
Meanwhile, Lord North died in 1932 at the age of 96. His family was unable to bear the costs of maintaining Wroxton Abbey and its staff, the lease was surrendered to Trinity College Oxford and its contents, including its art and furnishings, were sold at auction.
Bicester became a separate Catholic parish in September 1943, and Father Stephen Webb SJ, then the parish priest of Hethe, became the first parish priest of Bicester.
In the post-war expansion of Bicester, Father Thomas Foynes started a new Catholic school off Queen’s Avenue in 1958, and introduced Presentation Sisters from the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin as teachers. He also planned to build a new church beside the old school, but there were problems with buying the necessary land.
When the site occupied by Bonner’s Stables became available, it was bought, and works begun in 1961. The adjacent property, Henley House, became the new Presbytery.
The Church of the Immaculate Conception was designed by Desmond Williams & Associates. Desmond Williams specialised in church architecture and was influenced by the Liturgical Movement and Vatican II. He is known for his striking modernist church buildings in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
He first worked with Arthur Facebrother, before setting up his own practice, Desmond Williams and Associates, in Manchester in the early 1960s. This practice amalgamated in 1968 with W and JB Ellis to become Ellis Williams Architects.
Williams is regarded as one of the key British architects in the Roman Catholic Liturgical Movement who used contemporary design and construction methods to deliver the liturgical changes introduced by Vatican II. Other architects who shared this approach included Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, Gerard Goalen, Francis Pollen and Austin Winkley.
A number of buildings by Desmond Williams have been listed, including four churches: Saint Mary, Dunstable (1964), where his ceiling was inspired by King’s College Chapel, Cambridge; Saint Augustine, Manchester (1966-1968); Saint Dunstan, Birmingham (1966-1968); and Saint Michael, Penn, Wolverhampton (1967-1968).
Historic England describes Williams as ‘an architect notable for his innovative church buildings at a time of great change in ecclesiastical architecture.’ One of his guiding principles was being to bring as many of the congregation near the altar.
His church in Bicester was also deliberately designed to be deferential to its historic context, in particular to Saint Edburg’s Church, 100 metres away on the other side of the street and more than 1,000 years older.
The church is designed in a modern Gothic style, more overtly expressed internally. It is built of load-bearing brick of a pale colour chosen to blend with the Cotswold stone of the surrounding buildings. There is some sparing use of stone for the dressings and the steeply pitched roofs are clad with interlocking clay pantiles.
It is T-shaped, and with a three-bay nave, narrow passage aisles, a baptistry that is now the Lady Chapel, confessionals and sacristies giving, a west-end narthex, a square-ended sanctuary with a raised tower crossing and shallow projecting transepts-cum-side chapels.
The tower has a pyramidal roof with windows on all sides. Internally the tower is open to the roof line, creating a lantern effect of natural light over the sanctuary.
The most striking feature inside the church is the full height transverse arches – made entirely of rustic brick – that hold up the roof. This design of arch was also used in many Arts and Crafts churches in the late 19th century and mimics the mediaeval timber cruck structures of the earliest timber churches.
At their bases, the arches are pierced with small circulatory openings that harken back to the side aisles of mediaeval churches. The walls between these imposing arches are plastered and plain and incorporate simple tall lancet-style windows that flood the nave with natural light. There is a black and white chequerboard floor throughout. Plain oak benches complete the effect of a simply organised but reverential space.
At the west end, the gallery over the narthex is placed in a pointed arched recess. On the west wall, on the north side, the foundation stone has a Latin inscription.
The front elevation is plain, the brickwork relieved only by the segmental arched entrance, where the doors have been renewed, and a large bronze statue of the Immaculate Conception.
The 11 ft bronze statue above the main entrance is by Mark Delf of Stafford, and was put in place on 20 August 1993. The statue weighs about half a ton and was lifted into position by crane. It replaces a small statue of Our Lady of Lourdes that stood in a niche above the front door. The new statue was paid for from a bequest from a former parishioner, Margaret McCann.
The church was opened and blessed by Archbishop Francis Grimshaw of Birmingham on 23 March 1963. Since then, it has been altered on a number of occasions. The most recently alterations involved the introduction of the present altar, which came from Saint Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham, along with new stone seating, ambo and font.
The painted Crucifixion in Primitive Italian style by the Prior of Farnborough Abbey, was installed in place of the former reredos and crucifix.
New furnishings in the north chapel include a new tabernacle and above this, set within an arch, an unusual stone carved tympanum of folded arms carrying wheat sheaves with vines, symbolising the Eucharist, and stained glass windows by Jane Campbell ca 2000.
The 1960s font, with a veined black marble bowl on a stone base, was moved to the narthex, where it is now used as a large holy water stoup. Statues in the nave include the Sacred Heart, a signed work by Ferdinand Stuflesser of Ortisei in Italy.
These alterations were completed in time for the solemn consecration of the church by Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham on 10 July 2000.
The Foynes Memorial Garden was laid out in 2010 on the south side of the church as a columbarium, designed by Robert James Landscapes.
The modern parish and community centre behind the church is known as the Pope John Paul II Centre. Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham laid the foundation stone for the centre in 2010 and it was opened by Princess Anne in 2011.
• Father Craig Davies has been the parish priest of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Bicester, since August 2024, and the parish deacon is the Revd Michael Panejko. Sunday Masses are: 6 pm (Saturday Vigil) and 9 am and 11 am.
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