Patrick Comerford
During my recent visits to St Albans, I have visited St Albans Cathedral and a number of churches in the area, including Saint Michael’s, which I described yesterday, and Saint Alban’s and Saint Stephen’s Church or Ss Alban and Stephen Church on Beaconsfield Road, the Roman Catholic parish church in St Albans.
Saint Alban’s and Saint Stephen’s Church is close to St Albans City railway station in the centre of St Albans, and its tall tower is a prominent landmark in this part of St Albans.
Saint Alban Roe (1583-1642), a Benedictine priest and one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, is an important figure in the Roman Catholic presence in St Albans in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation. He was born Bartholomew Roe in Suffolk in 1583 and educated at Cambridge.
After visiting prisoners in the Abbey Gatehouse at the west end of St Albans Abbey, he became a Roman Catholic. He studied at the English College in Douai, then became a Benedictine in 1612, and was ordained in 1615 as Father Alban, taking the name of the first English martyr.
As Father Alban, he became a founder member of the new English Benedictine Community at Saint Edmund, Paris. He returned to England but he was arrested, deported twice, and then jailed, and even spent some time in the Abbey Gatehouse in St Albans. He was found guilty of treason and was executed at Tyburn on 21 January 1642.
He was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He is one of the seven martyrs depicted in the modern sculptures by Rory Young in the mediaeval nave screen in St Albans Cathedral.
It was almost 200 years after the execution of Saint Alban Roe before the first Roman Catholic mission was started in St Albans in 1840. Father William Crook travelled to St Albans from Saint Edmund’s College in Ware and hired a room at the White Hart Inn on Holywell Hill.
Alexander Raphael, the Whig MP for St Albans and a former MP for Carlow, planned to build a church in St Albans in 1847. He commissioned the architect Charles Parker, who had been a pupil of Jeffry Wyatville and who also designed Saint Raphael’s Church, Surbiton.
Raphael bought a site beside Verulam House . However, when he died in 1850 he had not fully paid for the church. The site was then sold to the philanthropist Isabelle Worley of Sopwell House. She paid for the church to be completed according to the original plan, but as an Anglican church. Christ Church was consecrated in 1859. The church later became a Methodist church and later became private offices. It is now a Grade II listed building.
When Alexander Raphael’s old church became an Anglican church, the original Roman Catholic mission in St Albans came to an end.
A new Catholic mission was started in St Albans in the 1860s by a former Anglican priest, Father George Bampfield, who joined the Oratory of Cardinal John Henry Newman in 1857 and is remembered as an educator of the poor and a pioneer of Catholic evangelisation in Hertfordshire and North Middlesex. He came to St Albans from Barnet on horseback and first said Mass in a cottage on London Road.
The formation of the present parish began when a small church was built in London Road. The foundation stone of a new church was laid by Cardinal Henry Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, on 22 June 1877. The church was funded by Major James Gape and was designed by the architects TJ Willson and Samuel Joseph Nicholl. Nicholl also designed Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church, Wellingborough, and Saint Charles Borromeo Church, Westminster.
The church was dedicated to Saint Alban and Saint Stephen, the first English martyr and the first Christian martyr. It was opened by Cardinal Manning on 22 June 1878. It had a capacity for 80 people and cost £1,100.
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart were invited to take charge of the mission in St Albans in 1899. They were founded in France in 1854 by a diocesan priest, Father Jules Chevalier, who was touched by the sufferings of the people and saw this human tragedy calling for compassion.
The church was no longer large enough to accommodate the growing congregation by 1900 and there was no space around the church to build an extension.
The priest at the time, Father Michael Tierney, received permission from Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, Archbishop of Westminster, to build a new church on Beaconsfield Road and to sell the church on London Road. This was the third attempt to build a permanent Roman Catholic church in St Albans.
Bishop Algernon Stanley, auxiliary bishop of Westminster, laid the foundation stone on 22 July 1903. The church was designed in the Italian style by the architect John Kelly (1840-1904) of Kelly and Birchall of Leeds and was built in 1903-1905 by local builders, Christopher Miskin & Sons.
Kelly and Birchall also designed the Grade II listed Saint Luke’s Church on Gibbon Road in Kingston upon Thames (1886-1887) and the Grade II* listed Saint Patrick’s Church, Soho Square, London (1891-1893).
The church was dedicated and blessed by Francis Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, on 1 January 1905.
A Mass centre started at Skyswood Primary School in 1959 and later moved to Saint John Fisher’s School.
(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)
The church was enlarged in 1965-1967. The nave was extended, the old sanctuary was demolished and replaced with a larger one with side chapels. Side aisles, a bell tower, a choir gallery and a larger narthex were added. The extensions were designed by the architects Broadbent, Hastings, Reid & Todd. With the extensions, the church’s capacity went from 400 people to 600 people, and the church was then very much as it is seen today.
An old school at the back of the church was demolished and replaced with a parish hall and sacristy. A new presbytery was built in 1974, and includes a the prayer room for parishioners and parish groups.
The church was consecrated on 4 May 1977. The church roof and the top windows were replaced in 2005. The Sacred Heart Centre opened in 2013, following a complete renovation of the meeting rooms and hall.
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart decided reluctantly to hand the parish back to the Diocese of Westminster in June 2019.
• The parish priest of Saint Alban and Saint Stephen is Father Michael O’Boy, former Vice Rector and Dean of Studies at Allen Hall Seminary. Mass is at 6 pm on Saturdays and at 8 am, 9:30 am, 11:30 am and 6 pm on Sundays. In addition, Mass is celebrated in the Lady Chapel in St Albans Cathedral by a Roman Catholic priest at 12 noon every Friday.
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