Patrick Comerford
It is impossible not to notice the exuberantly massive Roman Catholic Church that stands tall on a prominent street corner on the way from the train station into the heart of Cambridge city centre.
This impressive – if not overpowering – castellated Gothic building is known locally as the Catholic church, or simply as ‘the Catholic,’ although local Cambridge Catholics often refer to it affectionately by its acronym, OLEM – Our Lady and the English Martyrs.
It was the first church my friend from Ireland and I visited during our walk-about in Cambridge two weeks ago. She was taking a short ‘top-up’ course in theology, and I was happy to show off the Cambridge I have known for almost 20 years.
The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and the English Martyrs, also known as the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs (OLEM), stands on the corner of Hills Road and Lensfield Road, a busy junction facing Regent Street and Gonville Place and a prominent corner in south-east Cambridge sometimes known locally as ‘Hyde Park Corner’.
It is a large Gothic Revival church built in 1885-1890, a Grade I listed building and the tallest building in Cambridge at 65 metres (213 ft), including the spire.
For the first quarter of the 19th century, the nearest place for Catholic worship in Cambridge was at Sawston Hall, about 10k m south of the city. Saint Andrew’s Church was designed in 1842-1843 by AWN Pugin (1812-1852), the great architect of the Gothic revival, and built on Union Road. At the same time, Pugin published his trenchant critique in the Ecclesiologist of the architecture and style of Saint Paul’s Church, close-by on Hills Road. A few years later, Pugin would play an important role in the restoration, decoration and furnishing of the mediaeval chapel in Jesus College in 1846-1849.
The parish priest Canon Thomas Quinlivan (1816-1885) was born in Co Clare, and arrived in Cambridge in 1843. He quickly became a popular figure and acquired additional adjacent land In 1865, but he could not raise adequate funds a new building project needed.
The ban on Roman Catholics attending the university, receiving degrees or holding fellowships in Cambridge colleges, was finally lifted in 1871. Until then, Saint Andrew’s had served the small Catholic community in Cambridge, but the increasing number of Catholic students at the University of Cambridge created the need for a new, much larger church.
With the aid of the Duke of Norfolk, the Lensfield estate was bought in 1879, and the task of raising more funds fell to Canon Quinlivan’s successor, Monsignor Christopher Scott. The new church was all made possible by Yolande Lyne-Stephens (1812-1894), a wealthy widow and famed French-born former ballerina at the Paris Opera and Drury Lane.
Monsignor Scott wished to commemorate the Catholic Martyrs who died between 1535 and 1681, over 30 of whom had been in residence at the University. On the Feast of the Assumption, 15 August 1884, she offered Scott £70,000 – the equivalent of almost £10 million today – to finance building the new church in its entirety, ensuring that it was to be built to her taste. She also paid for other churches, convents and schools in England and for the bishop’s house in Northampton.
Yolande Lyne-Stephens was the widow of Stephens Lyne-Stephens (1801-1860), a wealthy landowner who was said to be the richest commoner in England, and she bankrolled the construction of this ‘mini-cathedral’ – one of the largest Catholic churches in England.
In her biographical study, The beauty of her age, Jenifer Roberts tells the dark side of the story of Yolande Lyne-Stephens. She was born Pauline Duvernay in poverty in Paris, and by today’s standards, the adults involved in her life in her teens would all be accused of abusing her and her fellow dancers.
Roberts describes how Yolande was sold for sexual assignations from puberty, gave birth to two children, and became the mistress of a succession of men by the age of 18, including Louis Veron, manager of the Paris Opera.
When Yolande married Stephens Lyne-Stephens, the wealthy heir to the Lyne-Stephens glass fortune, she retired from the stage. They were married for 23 years before Stephens Lyne-Stephens died. Numerous court cases followed but Yolande inherited the family fortune and became the wealthiest woman in England – even richer, it was said, than Queen Victoria.
She dedicated the rest of her life to philanthropy and Catholic piety, despite living in a barely disguised ménage-à-trois with General Edward Stopford Claremont (1819-1890) and his Frances Charlotte (Wetherall) – Stopford Claremont was an illegitimate grandson of the 2nd Earl of Courtown.
The new church was designed by the architects Archibald Dunn (1832-1912) and Charles Hansom (1842-1900) of Newcastle. Their work includes the tower of the Catholic cathedral in Newcastle (Grade I), and the chapel of Stonyhurst College (Grade II*).
The building work by Rattee and Kett began in 1885, and the foundation stone was laid in June 1887. Despite the ill health of Yolande Lyne-Stephens, the church was completed and then consecrated on 8 October 1890. By the time of its completion, the total cost had risen from £30,000 to £70,000.
The first Mass was attended by all the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales except for Cardinal Manning and Bishop Vaughan.
The church is one of the largest Catholic churches in the United Kingdom. Outside and inside, it is a riot of detail and decoration: Gothic gargoyles and sleeping dogs, angels and saints, apostles and martyrs, all decorate and embellish the church in stone and in glass.
It is designed in the Gothic revival style, inspired by the Early Decorated or Middle Pointed style of the last quarter of the 13th century, and follows the traditional cruciform layout. Although it is not traditionally oriented – the High Altar and liturgical east face the geographic south-east – my references follow the conventional liturgical compass points.
The church has a polygonal apse and a central lantern tower. Casterton stone was used for the foundation, Ancaster stone for the plinth, the remainder is Combe Down stone, while the interior is built in Bath stone, Plymouth marble and Newbiggin stone.
The spire, the tallest in Cambridge, is 65 metres (214 ft) high and can be seen for several miles. The approximate internal dimensions are: length 48 metres (157 ft), width across the aisles 16 metres (52 ft), width at the transepts 22 metres (72 ft), and the height of the nave 15 metres (49 ft).
The (north) entrance porch is richly carved and ornamented, with a trumeau featuring Saint John Fisher (1469-1535), cardinal, Bishop of Rochester, Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who was martyred on 22 June 1535. In the tympanum is a figure of the Virgin Mary surrounded by sensing angels and a scrolling vine populated by martyrs.
The best general impression of the interior is obtained from the gateway in the iron screen dividing the nave from the ante-chapel. Inside and over the west door stands the figure of Our Lady of the Assumption crowned with lilies and standing on the crescent moon with the vanquished serpent beneath. The west window shows the English Martyrs arranged in two principal groups, the clergy on the south side with Saint John Fisher in their midst and the laity on the north grouped round Saint Thomas More.
The depictions in the windows include the dedications of Cambridge Colleges and scenes from the lives of English martyrs, in particular Saint John Fisher. The nave windows depict saints connected with the Church in Britain, arranged in chronological order from east to west.
The aisle windows were almost completely destroyed when the church was struck by a bomb on 1941, but were later replaced in their original form. They represent the various sufferings of the English Martyrs, their being brought before the council, racked, hung, drawn and quartered in the sight and sympathy of the faithful.
The north aisle windows depict Carthusians, Saint Thomas Moore, Blessed Margaret Pole and others, while the south aisle is made a ‘Fisher Aisle’, devoted to scenes from the life of Saint John Fisher.
The Rood, between the nave and the sanctuary, is of the type known as Majestas, with the figure of Christ with glorified wounds, robed in alb, stole and pallium as High Priest and crowned as King ‘reigning from the Tree’. The oak cross is about 6 metres high, the figures of Christ, the Virgin Mary and Saint John are of Kauri pine. They were carved locally by B Maclean Leach and completed and blessed in 1914.
Beyond the present, modern altar is the High Altar with the relics of Saint Felix and Saint Constantia, early martyrs Church. The tabernacle and ornaments of the altar are French work from Lyons. The baldacchino above the High Altar is similar to one over the tomb of Robert the Wise (1275-1343) at Santa Chiara, Naples. The figure of Christ in glory at the top is supported by angels on each side.
The Chapel of the Holy Souls is at the west end of the south aisle. The sculpture above the altar depicts the solace and relief of the Holy Souls in Purgatory through the intercessions of the Virgin Mary and the angel who comforted Christ in Gethsemane.
The organ was built in 1890 by Abbott and Smith to a specification by the Dublin-born composer Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), Professor of Music at Cambridge; his students included Herbert Howells, Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The belfry houses a ring of eight bells hung for change ringing, with a ninth for the Angelus. All the bells were cast in 1895 by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough. The tenor bell is believed to be the largest in Cambridgeshire. The chimes heard at each quarter-hour of the clock, made by Potts of Leeds, are based on the ‘Alleluia’ chant for the Easter Vigil.
The church has a 16th-century oak statue of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child beside the south aisle. The statue is said to have been found in Emmanuel College in 1850, and is said to be the same statue that Thomas Cromwell ordered to be removed in 1538. A notice under the statue the statue of was formerly in the Dominican priory that stood on the site of Emmanuel College.
The one additional donation Yolande Lyne-Stephens consented to was a mediaeval cross from the Austrian aristocrat Baron Anatole von Hügel (1854-1928), curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and a prominent Catholic in Cambridge.
The church was intended to make a strong, dramatic statement of faith in a city that had a strong Protestant tradition. This new Catholic church on such a prominent site, with its dedication to the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, caused much controversy among local Anglicans and members of the university. The steeple was taller than the then recently-completed All Saints’ Church opposite Jesus College, and such a large church outside the Church of England ruffled the feathers of many people in Cambridge.
Perhaps for these reasons and many others, EM Forster says in The Longest Journey that the Catholic church ‘watches over the apostate city, taller by many a yard than anything within, and asserting, however wildly, that here is eternity, stability, and bubbles unbreakable upon a windless sea.’
After its opening, the church saw a great rise in the number of Catholics in the parish. This was partly due to Monsignor Scott’s pastoral work as parish priest and Father Robert Benson’s reputation as a preacher. Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) was, perhaps, the best-known priest associated with the church is. He had studied classics and theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1890-1893.
Benson was a son of Archbishop Edward White Benson of Canterbury, who had ordained him priest in 1895. But after some time with the Community of the Resurrection, he became a Roman Catholic in 1903, was ordained a priest a year later and was then sent to Cambridge, and was a curate there in 1905-1908.
He found the Church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs ‘a little too gorgeous and complete.’ But his impact on Cambridge undergraduates was so great that leading Cambridge Anglicans tried to put pressure on his family to make him leave.
During the Blitz in World War II, a small bomb struck the sacristy during an air raid in 1941, blowing a 6-ft hole in the roof and another in the wall of the Sacred Heart chapel. The blast also shattered most of the windows and collapsed part of the organ gallery.
To bring the sanctuary in line with the liturgical directives resulting from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), it was redesigned and reordered by Gerard Goalen (1918-1999), a major architect of the Liturgical Movement in Catholic church design. Bishop Charles Grant of Northampton consecrated a new central altar on 7 April 1973. The original high altar was later used mainly for reservation of the Blessed Sacrament.
The Stanford organ was renovated in 2002 by Nicholson & Co Ltd. The choir is semi-professional and includes former university choral scholars. A second choir, the Schola Cantorum, sings almost exclusively in Latin, and sings polyphony and Gregorian chant at the weekly solemn Latin Mass.
The church was upgraded to a Grade I listed building from Grade II* in 2022. The rectory immediately to the south of the church dates from around 1890. In the Tudor style, of red brick with stone dressings and a castellated slate roof, it is a Grade II listed building.
Today, Cambridge is part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia. Meanwhile, Pugin’s old church was dismantled and re-erected as the Church of the Sacred Heart in St Ives in Huntingdonshire and is now listed Grade II.
•The Right Revd Monsignor Provost Eugène Harkness is the Rector and parish priest. Mass times are: Saturday, 10 am and 6 pm (Vigil); Sunday, 8 am, 9:30, 11 am, 1 pm (Polish), 4:30 and 6: 30 (Latin); weekdays, 8 am and 12:15. The church is open daily
