Patrick Comerford
When I was in Dunstable in Bedfordshire last week, the two buildings I truly wanted to visit are Saint Peter’s Priory Church in the centre of the town, which I wrote about yesterday (31 June 2026), and the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Mary’s Church, on West Street.
Saint Mary’s was designed on a circular plan by the distinguished church architect Desmond Williams (1932-2026) when he was not yet 30. It was built in 1962-1964 and is one of four churches he designed that are listed Grade II. It has been listed for four principal reasons:
• an early example of the impact of the Liturgical Movement on church design and anticipated the reforms adopted at the Second Vatican Council;
• an important early work in the career of Desmond Williams, an architect notable for his innovative church buildings at a time of great change in ecclesiastical architecture;
• its innovative circular form and layout;
• its intact interior, including good quality bespoke furnishings and a highly unusual tetrahedral ceiling.
The Roman Catholic Church was growing in England in the late 19th and early 20th, and this growth created the need to build a large number of churches that would serve the religious and social needs of a growing community.
Until 1927, Catholics in Dunstable had to travel to nearby towns to attend Mass. In that year the Bishop of Northampton granted a petition for Mass to be said in Dunstable under the leadership of the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians based in Potters Bar.
The new parish was dedicated to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and the first church was built in 1935. The former building survives as the parish social centre in the grounds of the present church, but has been heavily altered. When the Spanish Vincentians left the parish, they were succeeded by and the Irish Vincentians.
As Dunstable expanded after World War II, plans were drawn up for a larger church in 1961 and the foundation stone of a new church was laid on 29 April 1962. Bishop Leo Parker of Northampton blessed and opened the building on 15 March 1964. The new church, dedicated to Our Lady Immaculate, was designed by Desmond Williams and was built by R Willis and Son at a cost of £72,000.
The church is circular in plan. The internal layout places the altar in front of the congregation, rather than at the centre as was the case at groundbreaking churches of the Liturgical Movement in church design. Nevertheless, Williams’s work was at the forefront of new design and draws the congregation together around the altar, anticipating the emphasis on a greater sense of communion and community in worship that is at the heart of the major reforms of the Second Vatican Council, expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.
The liturgical arrangement in Dunstable is very similar to some highly significant later churches such as the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Clifton (1969-1973).
A contemporary presbytery and offices were built alongside the new church and a later hut was built to the north of the church beside a Garden of Remembrance (2000). The church has not been heavily altered since its completion, although the baptistery was later re-purposed as a shop.
Meanwhile, the association of the Irish Vincentians with Saint Mary’s Parish in Dunstable came to end when the parish was officially transferred to the Diocese of Northampton in September 2019.
Desmond Williams and Associates designed a number of modern churches, including Saint Augustine’s Church, Manchester (1966-1968) with a notable reredos by Robert Brumby; Saint Dunstan’s Church, Birmingham (1966-1968), and Saint Michael’s Church, Penn, Wolverhampton (1967-1968). His other churches that I have visited include the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Bicester, Oxfordshire (1963).
Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, is built of load-bearing brick and concrete, with walling in red-brown Fletton bricks and stained glass. The roof is of steel trusses covered in copper and asphalt. The interior features ironwork and joinery of pine and laminated tropical hardwoods.
The church is organised around a circular worship space with 12 projecting segments forming petal-like bays around its circumference. To the south-east, three full-height bays extend further outwards and are combined to form an entrance foyer with a baptistry and chapel at either side.
The stairs from the foyer lead to a gallery that cantilevers into the worship space. An ambulatory runs around the perimeter of the worship space cutting archways through brick piers to create a continuous path. Behind the altar, the ambulatory ramps upwards and connects with the sacristy and boiler room in a single-storey projection to the north of the church.
The exterior of the church is divided into 12 bays separated by full-height stained glass recesses with rectilinear multi-coloured panes. Set back above these bays is a plain-glazed clerestory beneath a copper roof that rises gently to a needle-like spirelet topped with a Celtic cross.
The principal entrance is at the centre of three projecting bays. Three modern replacement doors are accessed under three segmental concrete hoods to enter the foyer. Above the hoods is the coat of arms of Pope Paul VI, who was Pope when the church opened. On either side is a narrow window and five further windows are above. Most other bays have 10 slit windows arranged across four rows. The three bays at the north-west are not separated by glazing and connect to a single-storey projection with plain windows and a doorway at the top of a small cantilevered flight of concrete steps.
Inside the church, the worship space consists of four polygonal ranks of pews in good quality pine with open backs and upholstered kneelers on hinges. The bench ends follow the geometry of the benches and each has a cross in relief at the uppermost corner.
The nave floor, which has developed large cracks, is original and is laid in diamond patterns of grey and white tiles. Axially positioned opposite the entrance and in front of the pews, a wide polygonal sanctuary has a communion rail of cruciform brass stanchions and a dark marble top. The sanctuary steps are terrazzo and lead to a large white marble altar inlaid with gold mosaic tiles reading: Adoro Te Devote. Iron openwork behind the altar supports a large crucifix and allows views of the only bay to have stained glass in the narrow slit windows.
The whole worship space is unified by a sound-absorbing ceiling of 600 aluminium pyramids in 18 shades of blue and white radiating in concentric rings from a Greek cross in a boss at the centre. Williams’s design for the ceiling evokes mediaeval fan vaulting, especially that of the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge.
Within the ambulatory there are two confessionals clad in tropical hardwood with plain interiors. To the east of the narthex, Williams placed a baptistery entered through a screen of iron openwork of the same design as the reredos and lectern, on which hang two carved doves. The baptistry, now a shop, retains a round font in fine white marble carved with a pattern of squares that echo the stepped square recess in the floor that is now covered, and a suspended wooden square of the same proportions that hangs from the ceiling. The font is supported on a square shaft with a mosaic figure of Saint John the Baptist on the front and water on the back.
The architect Desmond Williams died earlier this year (31 January 2026) aged 93. He is best known for his design of modern Catholic churches, reflecting a rare ability to bring together liturgical function, architectural ambition and artistic collaboration. The quality and significance of his work were recognised during his lifetime with the listing of four of his churches, a distinction that placed him among the leading figures of post-war British architecture.
Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, which was completed in 1964, is typical of his work. The building’s circular form cradled the congregation in an expansive embrace, bringing them nearer to the altar. Its real drama, however, lay in its complex tetrahedral ceiling, described as ‘resembling a giant and delicate piece of origami’. It is fashioned from 600 aluminium pyramids bolted together in alternating bands of blue and white – ‘a modern vault of heaven’, as the obituary writer said in The Gurdian.
Desmond Williams explained: ‘The ceiling was inspired by my earlier visits to King’s College Chapel in Cambridge’, with its exquisite stone lattice of mediaeval fan vaulting.
Williams designed churches that are bold yet disciplined, characterised by a confident use of materials, proportion and acoustics. His other listed churches were all completed in 1968.
Collaboration lay at the heart of his practice. At Saint Augustine’s Church, Manchester, he worked closely with the ceramic artist Robert Brumby, whose imposing sculptural reredos, along with Pierre Fourmaintraux’s abstract stained glass, elevate and enrich the architectural fabric. The unified and powerful liturgical space they created exemplifies the progressive, interdisciplinary spirit of 1960s British modernism.
Desmond Williams was born in Whalley Range, Manchester, on 7 July 1932, the son of Sydney Williams, a draughtsman of electrical systems on submarines, and his wife, Eleanor, a staunch Catholic, He was educated at Saint Bede’s College, Manchester, where his early interest in architecture was encouraged.
A formative moment came during a teenage visit to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight. There the abbey’s simple brick interior, its harmonious proportions and powerful combination of architecture, music and liturgy left a lasting impression and instilled a lifelong fascination with the relationship between space, sound and spiritual experience. His teenage interests in architecture were strengthened by a cycling trip through East Anglia, exploring Norwich Cathedral, along with local churches and historic houses.
Williams studied architecture at the University of Manchester School of Architecture, where his contemporaries included Donald Buttress, later the surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey. After qualifying, he was briefly in partnership with Arthur Farebrother in Altrincham, securing early commissions for churches and schools. His first task as project architect was Saint Catherine of Siena Church, Didsbury (1957), designed in the style of a Romanesque basilica.
He was only 28 when he set up his own practice in Manchester, nurturing strong professional links with the Department of Education and Science that led to a steady stream of commissions. One of his first church commissions he received was for Saint Mary’s, Dunstable. The schools and colleges he designed included an extension to Ampleforth College, the Benedictine-run boarding school at Ampleforth Abbey.
Williams formed a partnership with the W & JB Ellis of Liverpool in 1968. This expanded into Ellis Williams Architects, with studios in London, Berlin and across the north of England. He was appointed OBE in 1988 in recognition of his work as a church architect and he continued working until he was in his mid 90s. He died on 31 January 2026.
• Sunday Masses in Saint Mary’s are: Saturday Vigil, 6 pm; Sunday mornings, 9:30 and 11:30; weekday Masses are generally on Monday to Friday at 9:30, or 10 am on bank holidays.
