Patrick Comerford
When I was visiting Comerford Road in Brockley, south-east London, earlier this week, I visited Saint Mary Magdalen Church, which stands on the corner of Comerford Road and Howson Road. Saint Mary Magdalen is a much-altered Italianate church built in 1898-1899 and designed by the little-known architect Young Bolton, who died in 1903.
The mission at Brockley began in 1895 and a plot measuring 1,321 square yards was bought. A school was opened that year, with an upper floor that was used as a temporary chapel. This was soon inadequate and Bishop Francis Bourne sanctioned building an inexpensive church, for which he advanced £2,000. Bishop Bourne was Bishop of Southwark (1897-1903) and Archbishop of Westminster (1903-1935), and in 1911 he was made a cardinal.
At the time, about 370 Catholics were living in the area, and the church was built to seat 300 people. Bishop Bourne blessed and laid the foundation stone on 9 July 1898. The new church was blessed and solemnly opened by Bishop Bourne on 16 March 1899.
A new Angelus bell was blessed and hung in one of the towers in 1900 and was rung for the first time on Easter Sunday 1900.
The stone pulpit was blessed and used for the first time on 24 July 1904, the patronal feast. It was presented to the mission priest, Father James Hayes by parishioners from his previous parish in Sutton.
When two new missions were opened in Nunhead and Forest Hill in 1905 and 1906, they took away parishioners from Brockley. Subsequently, the Bishop of Southwark, Bishop Peter Amigo, decided to place the Augustinians of the Assumption in charge of Saint Mary Magdalen. Bishop Amigo is often remembered as the bishop who imposed ‘minor excommunication; on the Modernist priest George Tyrrell and restricted the possibility of a full Catholic burial when Tyrrell died in 1909.
The Assumptionists, formally the Congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption (AA), were founded in Nîmes, France, in 1845 by Father Emmanuel d’Alzon. In late 19th century France, the Assumptionists were controversial at the time of the Dreyfus Case as they actively promoted the conspiracy theory that unnamed Jews were destroying French institutions, in particular the army and the Catholic church.
The Assumptionists were suppressed throughout France in 1900, accused of accumulating a fund to support a royalist movement to overthrow the Republic. Many priests went abroad, including the Assumptionist priests who arrived on Comerford Road in 1906. They remained at Comerford Road for 91 years, until July 1997.
The first Assumptionist mission priest at Comerford Road was Father Marie-Louis Deydier, who spent three terms at Brockley.
The richly decorative high altar is one of the few original furnishings to survive in the church. It was designed by Father Gregory Chedal, was blessed on 10 December 1911 and survives as the present high altar.
A Calvary designed by Joseph Dutton was unveiled as a war memorial in 1917, and it was completed a year later with the addition of a marble tablet in the form of an open book with the names of the war dead.
When Father Chedal returned from World War I in 1919, he set about completing the four side altars dedicated to the Sacred Heart, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Peter and Saint Joseph. But, apart from their statues, nothing survives of these four side altars.
Father Chedal also began work on the Lady Chapel with a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. By December 1919, the altars were in place, the sacristy was enlarged by removing a wall and inserting a door that connected the sacristy and the presbytery. The new altars were blessed at the silver jubilee service on 7 October 1920, and Brockley became an independent parish that year.
The presbytery on Comerford Road was refurbished, the church roof repaired in 1926, and a statue of Saint Theresa was blessed. The church was repaired in 1926-1927 and the Lady Chapel was decorated.
Two bells cast at the Paccard foundry at Annecy, France, were blessed and hung in the tower in 1929. Electricity was introduced to the church along with an electric organ blower by the end of 1930.
During the inter-war years, the Catholic community in the Comerford Road area and in wider Brockley grew to over 2,000 with the development of the Honor Oak Estate, rehousing people from Deptford, Rotherhithe and Bermondsey.
The organ was repaired and overhauled about 1937, and repairs were also made to the west front, towers, and the wall along Comerford Road.
During World War II, a time bomb fell nearby on 16 September 1940 and the parish priest removed the Blessed Sacrament and the Lady Chapel’s altar stone before the bomb exploded the next day. The Lady Chapel was completely destroyed, the north wall pushed inwards and the sanctuary furnishings were severely damaged. Only the high altar and Saint Peter’s altar remained intact. Although the presbytery was rendered uninhabitable, the priests returned to the house by late 1940.
A school room served as a temporary chapel until the church reopened on Easter Sunday 1943 while repairs were continued.
The second phase of restoration began in late 1948, the sanctuary roof and the Lady Chapel were rebuilt and the smashed pulpit was reconstructed. New coloured glass was inserted in all the windows and an upper room was added to the sacristy. The restoration was almost complete by 1950. A new floor was planned, as well as refurbishing seats and kneelers, repairing the organ, and works to the lighting and cleaning.
Bishop Cyril Cowderoy blessed the new Lady Chapel and the new altar in December 1951.
Father Patrick O’Neil repositioned the west doors in the tower in the 1950s, creating a central large door in place of a row of five windows, and the two side doors were replaced by windows. The former south-west porch inside became a baptistery but is now a toilet.
There were plans to demolish the presbytery and three adjoining houses to build a larger church, but these came to nothing. The parish bought Saint Cyprian’s Hall from the Anglican parish of Saint Hilda, Crofton Park. There were renewed plans to build a new church in 1968, but once again these plans were not realised. The font was moved closer to the sanctuary in 1980. A new hall was built behind Saint Cyprian’s Hall in 1981 and opened in 1982.
The organ was overhauled in 1985 and alterations involved raising the sanctuary floor, removing the altar rails and the pulpit, and inserting a sound-proof confessional.
The Lady Chapel altar was brought forward and a reconciliation room was created. When the Lady Chapel was renovated in 1996, its small tabernacle was removed.
The high altar survives largely as it was designed by Father Gregory Chedal in 1911. It is made from Bath and Portland stone and marble. The frontal depicts the Last Supper and is flanked by statues of the four evangelists. The reredos includes a Calvary with a kneeling Saint Mary Magdalen. On either side are niches with the patron saints of the Assumptionists, Saint Monica and Saint Augustine of Hippo, mother and son.
The west façade of the church facing Howson Road has a second floor niche with a statue of Saint Mary Magdalen. The side elevation now facing Comerford Road has five large round-headed nave windows separated by shallow wall strips.
The World War I memorial in the church grounds has a wooden cross with a sculpture of the Crucified Christ, set on a brick plinth with plaque. It has been designated with a Grade II listing because of its design and ‘as an eloquent witness to the tragic impact of world events on the local community’ during World War I. The memorial was the idea of Father Marie-Louis Deydier, who had been a military chaplain. It was unveiled on 7 July 1917 at a ceremony attended by the Mayor of Lewisham, Sir John and Lady Knill, the Assumptionist Provincial, the Lord Mayor of London, and relatives of the dead. The marble tablet designed by Joseph Dutton was added the following year.
The Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart, or the Cabrini Sisters, opened a day and boarding school in Wickham Road in 1902, and stayed until 1922, when their lease expired. Three years after they left, the Oblate Sisters started a new school in Wickham Road. Saint Cyprian’s Hall was sold in 2009, and the school hall is now used as a church hall.
The Assumptionist Fathers left Comerford Road in 1997 due to a fall in vocations, although they continue to run communities in Bethnal Green, London, and Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The parish is now under the care of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit or Spiritans, known to many as the Holy Ghost Fathers. In Ireland, they are associated with places such as Kimmage Manor, Blackrock College, Saint Mary’s College, Rathmines, and Saint Michael’s in Dublin and Rockwell College, near Cashel, Co Tipperary.
• The parish priest is Father Nathaniel Ewusi; Father Christian Enechukwu is the assistant parish priest; and the Revd Willian Dunphy is the parish deacon. Weekend Masses: Saturday, 6:30 pm Vigil Mass, Sunday, 8:30, 10 and 11:30 am; weekday Mass: Monday to Saturday 9.30 am; Holy Day Masses: 9:30 am and 8 pm.
