Patrick Comerford
We spent a day in Oxford earlier this week, and as temperatures rose during the day and the heatwave began to take a grip on the land, I went for a walk by the river and in search of some churches and ecclesiastical sites I had not visited before.
Holy Rood Church is near Folly Bridge on the Abingdon Road, and a short walk south from the centre of Oxford, between the late 18th century Grandpont House, now owned by Opus Dei, and the playing fields of Brasenose College.
The church has been described as ‘a landmark in English Catholic ecclesiology’ and is advanced in its liturgical planning. It was designed by the architect Gilbert Flavel, who was inspired by Saint Paul’s Church, Bow Common, designed by Robert Maguire and Michael Murray. It has a large number of works of high artistic merit, including works associated with Eric Gill.
Holy Rood Church serves North Hinksey parish, the most northern parish in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, whose boundaries mainly follow the old county boundaries. The Hinksey areas were transferred from Berkshire to Oxfordshire in two phases: New Hinksey in 1889; and North Hinksey, South Hinksey and Hinksey Hill in 1974.
Building the church was made possible through an endowment in 1956 by a soldier, diplomat and explorer, Colonel Reginald Schomberg (1880-1958). Schomberg, who was ordained priest late in life, entrusted Father John Crozier (1917-1993), the priest in the North Hinksey parish from 1954 to 1968, with finding a site for a new church for Oxford Catholics living south of the river and in neighbouring villages.
The site was originally the orchard of Grandpont House, the former home of the Salter family, and Crozier bought it from Brasenose College in 1959.
The Liturgical Movement radically reassessed how churches reflect celebrating the Word of God. It focussed on the Eucharist, and the relationship of the congregation to each other and to God. This movement was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church through the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), although its importance was evident as early as 1947 with Pope Pius XII’s 1947 Mediator Dei et Hominum and the 1955 encyclical De musica sacra.
By the mid-1950s, many church architects were exploring e centralised and circular church plans, moving away from traditional longitudinal plans. The Catholic Herald in 1962 published a list of more than a dozen British churches along this plan form that were recently built or were being built.
In light of the liturgical movement and its architectural effects, the Oxford-based architect Gilbert Flavel was chosen in 1959. Flavel, an Anglican, was chosen because of his sympathetic attitude towards the new liturgical thinking, and Crozier had admired his restoration of Saint Michael at the North Gate, Oxford, and his work at the London College of Divinity in Norwood.
In the years immediately before Vatican II, Crozier travelled widely throughout Europe, studying church design in relation to the liturgical revival. In 1958, he was impressed with James Gardner’s British Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Brussels, ‘which I thought would make an admirable church on a riverside site. Like Coventry Cathedral, however, it was oblong, whereas the new liturgy seemed to demand a building in the round or square. Each of the three towered segments of the pavilion was a square. An enlarged replica of a segment could form the basis of a church, in a style bringing out the symbolism of God’s tent among men.’
Flavel designed the church in an advanced liturgical style, before the reforms introduced at the time the Second Vatican Council. His design conceived of a church ‘in the round’ and tent-like. This enabled Mass to celebrated in the then traditional ad orientem, facing east, as well as versus populum, facing the people, as became normal.
The dedication is to the Holy Rood, (‘Holy Cross’), and the whole building is designed on a plan of a ‘Jerusalem Cross’ with equal arms, and a Jerusalem cross also surmounts the central lantern. The church is octagonal with a square lantern of four glazed gables cutting into the pyramid roof, and the walls are of yellow-brown brick. The tent shape reflects the tent of the Tabernacle in the Old Testament, the dwelling place of the presence of God.
The church was built for £35,000 by Bartlett Brothers of Witney. It was dedicated by Bishop Thomas Holland, coadjutor bishop of Portsmouth as titular Bishop of Etenna, on 16 December 1961, in the year before Vatican II opened. The church was consecrated by Bishop Derek Worlock on 5 February 1962.
To the left of the entrance, the corner stone has the inscription ‘19+61’ and ‘Huius Ecclesiae Lapidem Angularem Iecit + RR DD Thomas Holland Episcopus Etennae’. To the right of the entrance is a spiral staircase to a choir gallery fitted with more pews for the choir and an organ.
The plan of the church consists of an octagon set within a Greek Cross for the main worship space, with ancillary spaces at the corners making up an overall rectangular plan. The Blessed Sacrament chapel is to one side, outside the rectangle. There is a glazed central entrance, its cruciform glazing subdivisions evoking the dedication. On either side are single-storey, flat-roofed spaces with ancillary functions.
The main double-height worship space rises up behind, with central raised top lighting with a pitched broach roof clad in copper sheeting. The walls are clad in pale brick, overlaying a steel frame construction.
The entrance doors lead into a narthex and baptistry, with ancillary rooms giving off to left and right. At the centre of this narthex and baptistry is a large granite font, the polished inside sufficiently large to allow for total immersion. It is incised with the lettering Fons Vitae Aeternae (Fount of Eternal Life), by Kevin Cribb (1928-2013), a son of Laurie Cribb, an assistant to Eric Gill.
Crozier wrote that ‘the calm and simple dignity of Gill’s art harmonises with the new architecture, so the artists were as far as possible drawn from his school’. Cribb also carved the cornerstone on the left hand side of the entrance into the main body of the church.
The sanctuary is placed at the liturgical east end, and not – as at Saint Paul’s, Bow Common – at the centre of the building. However, the altar is and always was well forward of the east wall. The freestanding benches were originally raked at the sides to face towards the sanctuary.
The Blessed Sacrament Chapel to the right of the main seating area, is a low single-storey space and the only area in the church with stained glass windows. The floor of the narthex, nave and chapel is of black and white linoleum squares, producing a chequerboard effect. At the liturgical west end of the main worship space is a gallery with a large organ.
The church is also notable for the quality of its furnishings. The altar, like the font, is of granite and inscribed with lettering by Kevin Cribb: Dux Vitae Mortuus Regnat Vivus (‘Life’s champion slain, lives and reigns for ever’). Hanging over this is a giant circular corona by Michael Murray, symbolising the 12 gates of Jerusalem, with the lights symbolising the 12 apostles.
This and the other metalwork are all by Michael Murray (1923-2005). They include a bronze Pantocrator on east wall behind the altar, the bronze Theotokos, based on a Romanesque relief in York Minster, on the wall near the Blessed Sacrament chapel, the tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, the ciborium, chalice, sanctuary lamps, altar cross and candlesticks.
The Blessed Sacrament chapel has two abstract stained glass windows by Charles Ware based on designs from Chartres Cathedral.
The contents of Eric Gill’s chapel at Piggotts, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, were given by Gill’s daughter to Crozier in 1963. A small stone carving by Gill of Christ on the Tree of Life was installed above the tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, while other furnishings went to Saint Thomas More, Boar’s Hill, also part of the main parish of North Hinksey.
The chapel wall also has tablets by Cribb commemorating Schomberg and Crozier. The bronze Stations of the Cross on the walls of the nave are lit by conical lights. The plaque honouring Our Lady of Poland beside the gallery stairs is a reminder of the contribution of the Polish community to the church.
The church was listed Grade II in 2020 for its architectural interest as a largely intact example of a 1960s church designed to meet the changing worship practices of the period; for its interior and it with high quality, designed fixtures and fittings; and because it is illustrative of post-war churches designed to the principles of the Liturgical Movement.
• The parish priest is Father Daniel Lloyd, a former Anglican. Saturday Vigil Masses are at 5 pm (Divine Worship of the Personal Ordinariate of Walsingham) and 7:30 pm (Portugese); Sunday Masses are at 11:15 am and 5 pm (Latin, 1962). Weekday Masses are at 9 am. The church is open on weekdays from 8:30 to 5:15.
