Patrick Comerford
Holy Rood Church, the Roman Catholic parish church in Watford, has been described one of the finest churches of the late 19th century. Simon Jenkins, in England’s Thousand Best Churches, says it is ‘a true town church’.
The church was built in 1889-1890 and stands on the west corner of Market Street and Exchange Road in the Hertfordshire town north of London. It is an outstanding late Gothic revival church and was designed by the architect John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), who also designed Westminster Cathedral, and it is a Grade I listed building.
The church stands on a very tight site corner site in the centre of Watford. It is an exceptional example of what the best church architects were working to achieve at the end of the 19th century. They were seeking a return to a refined, pure Gothic architecture in contrast to the showy products of the High Victorian years. Yet, at the same time, they wanted to provide beautiful furnishings and decoration.
Bentley prepared the Gothic Revival designs for Holy Rood Church at the same time as he was working on his drawings for the very different Westminster Cathedral. The church in Watford is the only church by Bentley that he was able fully to furnish and decorate as he intended, and it remains a very little altered and harmonious building, with fixtures and fittings of the highest quality.
Bentley was born in Doncaster on 30 January 1839. A master of the neo-Gothic and Byzantine Revival styles, his great opportunity was hia commissioned to design Westminster Cathedral in 1894. After deciding on a Byzantine Revival design, he travelled to Italy to study some of the great early Byzantine-influenced cathedrals, including Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice. Because of illness and an outbreak of cholera in Istanbul, he was unable to complete his tour with a study of the Hagia Sofia. He ended his tour in Venice and returned to London to begin work on Westminster Cathedral.
Meanwhile, Bentley was working at the same time on Holy Cross Church, Watford. The story of the church begins in 1863, when Father George Bampfield hired a room in Carey Place, Watford, to celebrate Mass. That year he bought a plot of land and built a hut with a corrugated iron roof in Upper Paddock Road that became his chapel.
The Catholic population was growing rapidly in Watford at the time, and Bampfield sought a new, larger site nearer the centre of the town in 1882. He built a chapel in Water Lane near the High Street in 1883. This chapel continued in use until Holy Rood church was opened seven years later.
Francis Fisher had bought land known as the Rose and Crown Meadow from Merton College, Oxford, in 1888. He laid out this land in small plots to be developed as Market Street, Percy Road and Marlborough Road, and sold them by public auction.
Stephen Taprell Holland (1843-1922) bought part of the land to build a new church and part of the land was bought by the Dominican Sisters from Harrow for a school and convent.
Holland was the proprietor of the building firm of Holland and Sons, with offices in Bloomsbury. He had become a Roman Catholic in 1862 and paid for building the church. Bentley, the architect he commissioned to design the church, had been apprenticed to the earlier firm of Winslow and Holland in 1855 and his talent had been recognised at an early age by Richard Holland.
Cardinal Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892), Archbishop of Westminster, laid the foundation stone of the new church on 29 August 1889. The church opened for worship on 16 September 1890, when the sanctuary, nave, transepts and south aisle had been completed.
Bentley then started work on the tower, baptistry, on the chapel of the Holy Ghost, which was set aside as the chantry for Holland, and on the north aisle. Throughout, the church was furnished according to Bentley’s designs.
Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (1832-1903), Archbishop of Westminster, laid the foundation stone for the tower on 7 May 1894. All the work had been completed by 1900, and the completed church was consecrated by Bishop Robert Brindle (1837-1916), Bishop of Nottingham (1901-1915), on 5 July 1900.
Bentley based his work and designs on late mediaeval architecture, but by no means could he be described as a copyist. There is no conventional chancel arch: instead there is an arch set as high as the roof will permit and a rood loft with a large rood is placed in the opening between the nave and chancel. Below it, there is no chancel screen, yet another device by Bentley to open up the view of the chancel from the nave.
The church has a five-bay nave, with transepts, clerestory, low-pitch roofed aisles, a three-bay chancel with an ambulatory, and a south-west porch.
There are side chapels at the north and south of the east end, and low vestries that extend out to the line of east end. Other details include two octagonal stair turrets.
The north-west tower was built in 1894-1900, mainly in flint and stone, and has panelled battlements.
The church has a large east window (1899) by Bentley, who designed an elaborate and complete set of fittings and stained glass that are unequalled elsewhere in his work. However, the west window is by Burlison and Grylls (1904) and the Stations of the Cross (ca 1910) are by Bentley’s friend NHJ Westlake.
The roof and walls have painted decoration, there are opus sectile or tile panels in the chancel, and a rich and elaborate marble and stone altar and reredos with a tabernacle and altar furniture by Bentley.
Other features include the rood beam across the chancel arch, an oak sedilia, a painted stone piscina and an aumbry, a tile and marble floor, the pulpit and the heptagonal marble font with an oak cover.
Six candlesticks and the cross over the tabernacle were added in 1893. However, four of the original candlesticks were later stolen; the other two are now displayed in the Watford Museum.
The pulpit was added in 1893 and two canopied shrines with alabaster statues were added in 1893-1894.
A temporary high altar that had been installed for the opening was replaced in 1899 by the present altar and tabernacle.
Electric lighting replaced the original gas lights in 1899, using the gilded bronze pendants designed by Bentley.
Bentley also designed the presbytery and school buildings beside the church.
When Bentley died on 2 March 1902, he was buried in the cemetery behind Saint Mary Magdalen’s Church, Mortlake. Taprell Holland erected the memorial to Bentley over the south-west door in Holy Rood Church, Watford.
Major repairs were carried out to the church in 1966 under Denny and Bryan of Watford, including the repair of the decayed Bath stone dressings, and internal decoration and cleaning. At the same time, the solid fuel heating system was replaced with oil-fired heating.
A large winged pelican originally surmounting the tabernacle was stolen about 1978 and replaced with a smaller pelican of inferior design.
A further scheme of refurbishment in 1990 marked the centenary and included flint and stonework and roof repairs by the stonemason Martin Jones. The internal painted surfaces were cleaned and conserved in the 1990s, the church was redecorated, and a new lighting scheme was installed.
More recent work has included the conservation of the sanctuary ceilings, rood beam and cross, conservation work of the sanctuary reredos and spandrels, and of the Lady Chapel altar and paintings. The altar rails and baptistery railings have been restored to their original colour scheme.
• Holy Rood Church has six Sunday Masses: 6 pm on Saturday evening; 8 am, 9:30 am, 11 am and 5 pm on Sunday; and a Polish Mass at 2:15 pm.
