Patrick Comerford
I have been writing in recent weeks about the St Clement’s area in Oxford, including two of the interesting pubs there: Port Mahon, with its curious naval connections, and the Oranges and Lemons, which has been joyfully repainted and redecorated.
During the past year, I have passed along St Clement’s on the bus, on my way to and from hospital appointments. But is only because I decided to go back one day to see the newly-decorated Oranges and Lemons that I accidentally stumbled the former Saint Ignatius’ Chapel. It is the first post-Reformation Roman Catholic place of worship in Oxford. But it is tucked away in Angel Court, behind a former school next to the Port Mahon. It is secluded – almost hidden – and I had never noticed it from the bus.
Saint Ignatius’ Chapel was built in 1793 by a Scottish-born aristocrat and French-educated Jesuit missionary priest, Father Charles Leslie (1748-1806). He was a younger son of Patrick Leslie, 21st Baron of Balquhain, and had been a Jesuit missionary priest in Woodstock, Tusmore, and Waterperry, 11 km east of Oxford, before moving into Oxford and to the Saint Clement’s area in 1790.
When the Catholic Relief Act was passed in 1791, some legal restrictions on Roman Catholics were removed, allowing them to build their own places of worship and to open their own schools. Other attitudes were changing in Oxford at the time: the university had recently welcomed refugee priests from France and had conferred degrees upon Roman Catholics; and the Saint Clement’s already had some Roman Catholic associations through foreign craft workers moving into the area.
A small Roman Catholic presence had continued in Oxford after the Tudor Reformation, and it is especially associated with Edmund Campion, a fellow of Saint John’s College. Campion’s Decem Rationes was printed secretly at Stonor Park, Henley, in 1581 and 400 copies were found on the benches of the University Church at the commencements that year. Campion was executed later that year.
Two Catholic priests, George Nichols and Richard Yaxley, were arrested for celebrating Mass at the Catherine Wheel inn in Magdalen Street East, and were hanged in Holywell with two of their helpers on 5 July 1589. Another Catholic priest, George Napper, was hanged at Oxford Castle on 9 November 1610 for celebrating Mass.
During the reign of James II, in an attempt to impose Catholicism on the university, Bishop Bonaventure Giffard was imposed as president of Magdalen College and the fellows were expelled. The restoration of the fellows after James II is marked at a special banquet, the Restoration Dinner, in Magdalen College on 25 October each year.
There were about 60 Roman Catholics in Oxford by 1791 and they wished to attend services. Father Charles Leslie decided to meet their needs and raised funds for a new chapel.
The chapel was built in 1793 in the garden of Leslie’s house in St Clement’s, but set back from the road because of anti-Catholic feelings that were still strong in Oxford. The chapel opened in 1795, and was namedSaint Ignatius – not after Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whose feastday was yesterday (17 October), but after Saint Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus or Jesuits (feastday 31 July).
A burial ground was consecrated in 1798, and Leslie was joined at Saint Ignatius the following year by the last resident chaplain at Thame Park, Father William Hothersoll, who left Thame after the Catholic mission in Oxford moved to the St Clement’s area.
The decision to move the Jesuit mission from Waterperry to Saint Clement’s did not bring an appreciable increase in the Roman Catholic population of St Clement’s, and the congregation of 160 was drawn from Roman Catholic families throughout Oxfordshire.
The Jesuit chapel was out of bounds for undergraduates, and two university proctors would stand outside the chapel on Sundays, looking out for any undergraduates.
After Sunday Mass, the congregation would have breakfast at the Port Mahon next door.
Father Charles Leslie was a notable figure in Oxford and e is said to have been the original of Mr Keith, the priest of JG Lockhart’s novel Reginald Dalton. He had a stroke at the age of 59 and died on 28 December 1806 at the age of 58.
The chapel holds a significant place in the story of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), later Cardinal Newman and now a canonised saint. Newman, whose feastday was celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church last week (9 October), is to be proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in two weeks time (1 November 2025). He was a curate in the Church of England parish of Saint Clement’s before he became a leading figure in the Tractarian or Oxford Movement. After becoming a Roman Catholic on 9 October 1845, he attended Mass in Saint Ignatius, regularly walking from Littlemore to St Clement’s during his remaining months at Oxford. But he was disparaging about the little chapel, and described it as ‘what to outward appearance is a meeting house’.
Father James Corry, the Jesuit priest at Saint Ignatius in 1871, worried about its size: ‘Even if I were a storm, what can I do in a tea kettle?’ His prayers were answered when the large and imposing Church of Saint Aloysius or the Oratory was built on Woodstock Road.
Saint Aloysius was designed by Joseph Hansom, and opened in 1875 by Cardinal Manning. Saint Ignatius continued to be used as a chapel of ease and some families and undergraduates preferred to continue to worship there. The last Mass was celebrated there in 1911.
Meanwhile, from 1869, the chapel had been in use as a school for girls and infants. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), when he was the priest at Saint Aloysius in 1878-1879, spent much time at Saint Ignatius’ Chapel and school, teaching and ministering to the poor and infirm in that part of the city.
The presbytery was replaced in 1909 by a new school building with Venetian windows and designed to house 200 pupils, although the chapel continued in use as a school room. Saint Ignatius’ School was renamed Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School in 1932, and the school remained there until 1968 when it moved to modern buildings in Headley Way, New Marston.
The chapel and school buildings have been converted into commercial and business premises, and the discreet courtyard off St Clement’s is now known as Angel Court.
A blue plaque was unveiled at the former chapel on Saint Ignatius Day, 31 July 2018, by the Bishop William Kenney, Auxiliary Bishop of Birmingham and the Revd Dr Joseph Munitiz SJ, former Master of Campion Hall, Oxford. A reception was held afterwards at the Port Mahon next door.
The plaque reads: ‘Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board The Former Chapel of St Ignatius The first Roman Catholic place of worship at Oxford after the Reformation Built by Fr Charles Leslie SJ in 1793 Campion Hall’.
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