Patrick Comerford
When I was in Rugeley this week and last week, I visited a number of churches in the area, including Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda, the Catholic church in Rugeley. The church has many links with the Wolseley family, which I was writing about earlier this week after my recent visit to the Wolseley Arms and the Wolseley Centre.
The church was built in the Gothic Revival style of the 19th century, and was designed by the architect Charles Hansom and built in 1849-1851, but its story also recalls the story of ‘recusant’ or Catholic families in Staffordshire, going back to the 17th century.
There were ‘some recusants’ in Rugeley in 1604, and Sir Richard Weston (1579-1658) of Hagley Hall, a judge and MP who fought as a royalist during the English civil war, was named as a ‘Papist’ in 1648.
Richard Weston, who built Hagley Hall in 1636, was the son of Ralph Weston of Rugeley, whose family traced its ancestry back to 1330 but did not settle at Hagley Manor until 1544. Richard Weston was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1607. He was elected MP for Lichfield in 1614 and was re-elected in 1622. He became a judge in 1632, a Baron of the Exchequer in 1634 and was knighted in 1635. As MP for Lichfield, Weston chaired the committee for annexing Freeford prebend to the Vicarage of Sait Mary’s, Lichfield.
Weston was impeached in 1641 but was not tried, and he joined the army of King Charles with his eldest son Richard in 1642. In September 1643, he was called to Oxford by the king. He was at Oxford when the royalist garrison surrendered in 1646, and by then Parliament had voted to remove him as a judge.
Weston’s son Richard Weston was MP Stafford in 1640-1642 and was a royalist. After the defeat at Oxford, he fled with Ralph Sneyd and James Rugeley to the Isle of Man, where they were welcomed by the king. The younger Richard Weston was taken prisoner at Colchester in July 1648 and was killed for the future Charles II on the Isle of Man in 1652.
The older Richard Weston wrote a short will on 18 November 1655, in which he declared he could not bring himself to dispose of his estate, as ‘these late troublesome times have much impoverished me’, and the ‘death of my late dear wife hath much troubled my mind’. He died at Rugeley on 18 March 1658, but his place of burial is not known. As his eldest son Richard had been killed in 1652, he was succeeded by his second son, Ralph.
Only nine ‘papists’ in Rugeley were mentioned in 1780. But by 1836 evening services were being held each Sunday in a temporary Roman Catholic church in Rugeley, and by 1839, Mass was being said there on Sunday mornings. Father Thomas Green of Tixall bought a site for building a church in 1842 from Henry Paget (1768-1854), 1st Marquis of Anglesey, who lived at Beaudesert and who had lost a leg fighting at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Meanwhile, the Catholic mission in Rugeley was served by a priest from Tixall until a resident priest, Father John Grenside, was appointed to Rugeley in 1846. Mass was said in the school from 1847 until at least 1849, and in 1848, when the mission was described as ‘paralysed with poverty’, there were about 500 Catholics in and near Rugeley.
The Church of Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda was built in 1849-1851, and takes its dedication from the names of the two principal founders, Joseph Whitgreave (1823-1885) of Heron’s Court, Rugeley, and his sister, Sister Etheldreda, a Benedictine nun.
The church was designed by the architect Charles Francis Hansom (1817-1888), a prominent Roman Catholic Victorian architect who primarily designed in the Gothic Revival style. He was the brother of Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1803-1882), architect and designer of the Hansom cab.
The church has an aisled nave of six bays, chancel, north chapel, south vestry, and a tall west tower. It is built of local stone given generously by Lord Anglesey, ‘without limit or restriction’.
On entering the church, visitors’ eyes are drawn immediately to the East Window, the High Altar and the reredos. The window was the gift of Sir Charles Wolseley (1846-1931), 9th baronet, of Wolseley Hall: he had inherited the family title and estates at the age of 8, and married Anna Theresa Murphy (1862-1937), the daughter of a wealthy Irish-American property tycoon and papal count who sought titled husbands for Anna and her three sisters.
The window was made by Hardman and Powell of Birmingham, associated with AWN Pugin, the architect of the Gothic Revival in church architecture, on many of his churches. The centre light depicts the Good Shepherd and on either side are Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda. The other two saints depicted are Saint Thomas Aquinas, recalling Canon Thomas Duckett who was the parish priest when the glass was installed, and Saint Charles Borromeo, in honour of Sir Charles Wolseley.
The High Altar is of carved stone, and was once richly gilded. The panels represent the Annunciation (left), the Crucifixion (centre) and the Ascension. Between these are narrow panels of Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda.
The reredos formerly had a pinnacled throne above the tabernacle, and a wooden cross. The throne was removed in 1938 when the church was being repainted because, Father Walshe, said it obscured much of the East Window.
The sanctuary once had rich fresco work in traditional gothic style by Hopkins of Abergavenny in 1885, but this was painted over in 1939. The south wall above the sedilia was covered with eight panels in gold on red within gothic canopies in brown, grey and black, depicting the instruments of the Passion.
The Lady Chapel, with its Caen stone and alabaster altar, was the gift of Helen Gulson, niece of Josiah Spode IV who left Hawkesyard to the Dominicans. The carvings represent the Annunciation and the Nativity, and above the canopy is a marble crucifix. There are statues of Saint Helen, mother of Constantine, and Saint Catherine of Siena. The ceiling is decorated in blue. The chapel has two stained glass windows and a statue of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child, a gift of Edward Wolseley (1848-1935), who was baptised in the church.
The window behind the altar depicts the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child in the centre, with Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Elizabeth of Hungary on either side. The three-light window on the north wall depicts the Presentation in the Temple and is a memorial to Joseph Whitgreave. The small windows at the top have medallions of Saint Rose of Lima, Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda. At the foot is a depiction of Joseph and Etheldreda Whitgreave offering the church to God.
Near the entrance to the Lady Chapel is a brass memorial with the coat of arms of Lord Anglesey. He was an advocate of Catholic Emancipation and was twice Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1828-1829, 1830-1833).
A carved oak altar is by Pugin, as is the confessional. The chancel and baptistry screens are of wrought iron by Harris, local iron founders, and the aisles have carved stone panels representing the Stations of the Cross. =
The church has two bells, dating from 1546 and 1848. The Lady bell, with the inscription ‘Sancta Maria ora pro nobis’, was cast in 1546 for an unknown church in Gloucestershire. It may be one of the last Lady bells before the Reformation and was bought for £80.
The church was solemnly opened in August 1851 and was consecrated 100 years later in June 1951.
An octagonal spire and flying buttresses were added to the tower in 1868. Around 1930, a turret that had formed part of the spire was found to be decayed and was removed. Further repairs to the spire were carried out in 1948.
Lord Anglesey also gave the stone for the presbytery, a gabled building south of the church and built at the same time. The former school was beyond it and the original plans envisaged a cloister linking the whole group.
The Sisters of the Christian Retreat opened Saint Anthony’s Convent at Heron’s Nest, on the corner of Heron Street and Lichfield Street, in 1901. But with the arrival of members of the order who were expelled from France, the convent moved in 1904 to Heron Court.
Heron Court Hall was built in the Gothic style in 1851 by Joseph Whitgreave. The convent used it as a retreat and teaching centre until the 1960s, when it was bought by Rugeley Billiards. Since then, many local businesses and clubs have made Heron Court Hall their home.
are buried in the churchyard: Sir Charles Wolseley (1813-1854), 8th baronet; and Sir Charles Michael Wolseley, 9th baronet (1846-1931). The Wolseley family’s links with to the church have continued to the present day.
When Sir Charles Wolseley (1944-2018), the 11th Baronet, died on 5 March 2018, his funeral took place in Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Church on 24 March 2018. His widow, the author Imogene (Jeannie) Wolseley (1943-2024), died in Rugeley on 11 July 2024 and Lady Wolseley’s funeral was held in the church on 26 July 2024.
• The Parish Priest is Father Peter Stonier. The weekend Mass Times are: Saturday Vigil Mass, 7 pm; Sunday Morning Mass, 8:30 am; Sunday Solemn Mass, 11 am; Sunday Evening Mass, 6:30 pm.
