Patrick Comerford
During our recent visit to York, I was welcomed at the Church of the English Martyrs on Dalton Terrace by the Parish Priest, Canon Michael Loughlin. The Grade II listed Roman Catholic church is the largest Catholic church in York. It is in a conservation area and faces the Mount, the Quaker-run girls’ school.
The church is dedicated to the English Martyrs, a group of men and women, lay and religious, who were executed between 1535 and 1679 in the aftermath of the English Reformations. They range from Carthusian monks who in 1535 declined to accept Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy to seminary priests who were caught up in the alleged ‘Popish Plot’ against Charles II in 1679. Many were sentenced to death at show trials or with no trial at all.
The English martyrs include John Fisher and Thomas More, who were canonised in 1935, and 40 further martyrs who were canonised in 1970, including Edmund Campion, Margaret Clitherow of York, Margaret Ward, and Edmund Gennings from Lichfield. Following beatifications between 1886 and 1929, Pope Paul VI recognised the whole group of 40 as saints and they were canonised together in Rome on 25 October 1970.
The parish boundaries include York railway station, Micklegate and the communities along the Tadcaster and Boroughbridge roads, the villages of Copmanthorpe, Upper Poppleton, Nether Poppleton and Bishopthorpe. The parish also includes the oldest convent in England, the Bar Convent founded in 1686.
The first congregation of the Church of the English Martyrs began meeting in a room in Saint Mary’s Court, off Blossom Street in 1881, the parish dates from 1882, and it took 50 years to build the church.
At first, Mass was celebrated in a room in Saint Mary’s Court, off Blossom Street. The congregation moved in 1889 to 17 Blossom Street, where it used the upper storey of a school building until the church and presbytery were built in Dalton Terrace in 1931-1932 and opened on 4 May 1932.
The Church of the English Martyrs and the presbytery are listed at Grade II and are regarded as a well-preserved example of the ‘Early Christian’ style of architecture that was popular with inter-war Catholic churches. The architects were Williams and Jopling of Hull, who also built Saint Vincent de Paul Church, Hull, to a similar but smaller design.
The church is built of red brick laid in English garden wall bond, with brick and stone dressings and pantile roofs. It has of a nave with clerestory and chancel under a continuous roof, with plain brick apse projections to the chancel and flanking chapels.
A tall Italianate campanile at the south-west is linked to the church by the baptistry. The clerestory has seven round-headed windows on each side and – as with all the windows in the church and the presbytery – has attractive geometrical leaded lights. The church incorporates subtle Art Deco influences and most of the original fittings and furnishing remain in place.
The main entrance is at the west front in a stone surround carved with martyrs’ palms and similar images. Over the doorway are the stone carved coat-of-arms of Pope Pius XI, and above this a mosaic panel of the Virgin Mary inscribed Regina Martyrum (Queen of the Martyrs).
The entrance is framed by orders of arched brickwork and surmounted by a dentil cornice and gable. On either side are lower arched orders of brickwork with smaller, flat-headed windows.
There is a second entrance on the garden-facing side of the campanile, with an accessible wheelchair ramp.
Inside, the church has moulded arches without piers to the single bay chancel, painted red to evoke the blood of the martyrs. The plain half-domed apse is painted blue and side-lit with narrow windows. The seven bay arcades of the nave have round ashlar piers and cushion capitals, and moulded red brick arches with linked hoodmoulds.
Above this, the wall surface is plastered and painted. A sill band runs below the clerestory windows. There is a timber wagon roof on corbels in the nave and the chancel. At the west end a rebated round arch is spanned by a choir and organ gallery, the frontal inscribed Te Martyrum Candidatus Laudat Exercitus, a phrase from the canticle Te Deum, ‘The white-robed army of martyrs praises you’.
Below is a central pair of doors flanked by piers with capitals, enclosing the underside of the gallery to form a narthex and repository. The aisles have strutted lean-to roofs and windows with patterned leaded glass, the timber given a polychromatic paint scheme of Art Deco character.
The Lady Chapel at the east end of the north aisle has a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. Off this aisle are confessionals with oak doors and square glass panels. Some confessionals have been removed to create a shrine or display area for relics and mementoes of the English martyrs, including the jawbone of Nicholas Postgate and a small portion of Thomas More’s hat, which Canon Loughlin pointed out to me.
The south aisle has a Blessed Sacrament chapel at its east end, and at the west end a curtained off and disused baptistry area with a fine carved stone font and iron gates.
The pews are made of Austrian oak, with moulded tops on the bench ends.
The Stations of the Cross were carved by GW Milburn of York. They are octagonal, with low-relief carving reflecting the style of Eric Gill.
The square campanile is about 80 ft high and is of four stages, with flat-headed windows on each side of the lower stages. It has rebated corners and corbelled turrets at the top of the third stage, and on these sit martyrs’ crosses made of creased tiles. The corniced octagonal bell stage has ribbed corners and four paired openings, each with a stone central shaft with a carved capital. Above this, a pyramidal pantile roof is topped with a cross.
An open loggia links the church and the presbytery at the ground floor. It is built with similar materials and detailing to the church. There are two parish halls: the small hall was built first, and the large hall was built later, in the 1950s.
The sanctuary was reordered by Weightman and Bullen in 1967. The high altar, altar rails and pulpit were removed. A new forward altar was introduced, with a new parquet floor in the chancel and seating around the apse, and a new terrazzo floor in the nave and aisles.
Pope John Paul II visited the parish on 31 May 1982 as part of his visit to Britain, which included a gathering at York race course. That year, the parish was transferred from the Diocese of Leeds to the Diocese of Middlesbrough.
The English martyrs were formerly commemorated in England with a feast day on 25 October. They are now celebrated together with all the 284 canonised or beatified martyrs of the English Reformation on 4 May.
• Sunday Masses are at 6 pm on Saturday evening and at 10:30 on Sunday mornings. Masses on holy days are at 9:30 am and 6 pm, and on All Saints’ Day at 9: 30 in York Minster. There are weekday Masses from Monday to Friday, and Mass is celebrated in the chapel of the Bar Covent at 12 noon on Fridays.
