The Development of the Parishes of the Diocese of Nottingham - A. P. Dolan (1994)

The Development of the Parishes of the Diocese of Nottingham Text of a Lecture given at Cathedral Hall, Nottingham, 15 September 1994,

by Fr. A. P. Dolan, Diocesan Archivist, as part of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Consecration of St. Barnabas' Cathedral

1. The Diocese of Nottingham was one of the twelve established in addition to the Archdiocese of Westminster when the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Wales was restored on 29 September 1850. It covered the entire counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Rutland, an area of 6676 square miles, with around 1700 towns and villages and a population of about one and a hall million. At its greatest length it measured about ninety miles, at its greatest width about ninety-seven. "It is a beautiful and fertile country, hilly towards the West in Derbyshire, flat and level for the most part in Lincolnshire towards the East" (R79).

With only minor changes, usually of the county boundaries themselves, this arrangement lasted until 30 May 1980, when the Bassetlaw District of Nottinghamshire and parts of the High Peak and Chesterfield Districts of Derbyshire were cut off to form the southern part of the new Diocese of Hallam. Although, in the second decade of this century, there was talk of creating another diocese based on Lincoln, nothing ever came of this proposal. Over the years, various other suggestions were made regarding the 'dismemberment' of the Diocese, notably in a document entitled 'Groundplan' (end of the 1960s-early 1970s); but these had no effect at that time.

2. In the area covered by the present Diocese of Nottingham, Christianity goes back a very long way. There is evidence that there were Christians in Lincoln in the early part of the fourth century. Alter the collapse of Roman rule in Britain in the early fifth century, there is not much to report until the advent of St. Paulinus who, about 630 AD., converted the Governor of Lincoln and baptised a considerable number of people in the River Trent near Gainsborough.

The King of the Middle Angles, Peada, was baptised in or near Repton (SW. Derbyshire) about the middle of the seventh century. And for about two hundred years, beginning in the late seventh century, there was a bishop in Leicester.

3. In 1066, immediately prior to reorganisation under the Normans: Nottinghamshire was in the Diocese of York Derbyshire in the Diocese of Lichfield & Coventry Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Rutland were in the Diocese of Dorchester-on-Thames which, under the first Norman bishop, became the Diocese of Lincoln.

4. Our area shared the strengths and weaknesses of the medieval Church and of the society of the time. One of the greatest strengths was the Episcopal rule of St. Hugh of Lincoln (11861200) about whom much needs to be said but cannot be said here.

5. Then came Henry VIII and the breach with Rome. The Carthusian Priors, Saints Robert Lawrence, John Houghton and Augustine Webster, who had all worked in our present diocese, were the first in the land to give their lives for their loyalty to the Pope as head of the Church on earth. This was in 1535. They were followed by many more men and women, laypeople, religious and priests. The names of some of these adorn the wall behind the altar of St. Hugh's Chapel in our Cathedral. To rehearse the story of the persecution of Catholics under Elizabeth I, their fluctuating fortunes under the Stuarts and what was for practical purposes an underground Church alter the Glorious Revolution of 1688 would be indeed interesting. But

this is not possible, given the restrictions of time, since our present purpose is to look at the development of the parishes of the Diocese of Nottingham.

6. Thomas Goldwell of St. Asaph, the last of the Catholic bishops, died in exile in Rome in 1585.

England was without a bishop until 1623, when Bishop William Bishop was appointed Vicar Apostolic for the whole country. But he died the following year and his successor, Bishop Richard Smith, was forced to flee abroad in 1631.

7. The next Catholic bishop to take up residence in this country was John Leyburn, who was sent as Vicar Apostolic for the whole of England in 1685.

Three years later, the country was divided into four 'vicariates' or districts, each with a bishop in charge. They were: London, Northern, Western and Midland. The entire present Diocese of Nottingham belonged to the last of these.

8. 1840 saw a further sub-division - into eight vicariates. The present Diocese of Nottingham was shared out between the Central District (Notts., Derbys., Leics.) and the Eastern District (Lincs., Rutland).

This was how things stood until 29 September 1850.

9. When the new diocese was created, twenty-seven 'missions' (later to be known as parishes) had resident priests [NB. GDS – Centenary Book - has 28]. The division according to counties was as follows.

Notts.

3 Derbys.

6 Leics.

7 Lincs.

11 Rutland 0 10. It is clearly impossible to give a history of each of the parishes of the Diocese; but that Is not my brief anyway. I am to talk about the development of the parishes of the Diocese. I propose to take four dates in the history of the diocese and say something about several of the parishes founded by those dates. I have selected parishes either because they are objectively important or: because they Illustrate a particular type of development or: because I happen to know a fair amount about them. On the assumption that most of you here this evening are from the Nottingham area, many of the examples chosen will be parishes not far from here.

11. The dates I have chosen are these: 1850 for obvious reasons 1890 because we have a fairly detailed report on the state of the Diocese for that year

1950 the centenary year 1981 the year after fifteen parishes were cut off to form part of the Diocese of Hallam 12. In 1850, Nottinghamshire had three places with resident priests; and in the village of Colston Bassett there was a church, built in 1838, where Mass was said once a month by the priest from Eastwell in Leicestershire.

The missions in Nottinghamshire with resident priests were Nottingham itself (St. Barnabas), Worksop and Newark. There is enough material available about our cathedral parish (e.g. Mgr. Cummins history and my article in the 1994 Year Book) to warrant my not making any further mention of it here. Worksop no longer forms part of our Diocese and hence will be omitted.

This leaves us with Newark.

Newark Is of significance because it was one of several parishes in the Diocese founded by - or served by – French priests in exile after the Revolution. In 1826, the year at Bishop Milner's death, nine of the twenty-five priests working in the territory at the later Diocese of Nottingham were French émigrés.

Jacques Gabriel Yver of the Diocese of Bayeux, based at Grantham, began to say Mass once a month in Newark whither, having collected a lot of money for this mission, he moved in 1831 and died there four years later at the age of seventy-four. (His body lies in a chamber beneath the Church of St. Mary the Immaculate in Grantham. Many of these exiled priests earned their keep initially by acting as tutors to the children of well-off families. Some subsequently returned to France; but a good number of them died in the adopted country which they had served in some cases for many years.

13. Of the six missions with resident priests in Derbyshire in 1850, Hathersage and Spinkhill are now in the Diocese of Hallam.

The early history of Hassop forms the subject of an article in the 1994 Year Book.

Glossop was one of the residences of the Dukes of Norfolk and in 1803, Fr. Joseph Barbe of the Archdiocese of Paris was appointed chaplain there. (My guess is that he may well have doubled up as tutor.) He must be regarded as the first parish priest of the later parish of All Saints whose church was built in 1831. He died in 1828.

New Mills was an important centre of the calico printing trade. To meet the spiritual needs of the Catholics involved in this, a priest was sent there in 1839, and the church was built six years later.

Derby, where the first chapel was built in 1813 and Pugin's great church of St. Mary was consecrated in 1839, was a very important centre of Catholic life in the middle third of the nineteenth century. The twenty Catholic families listed as living in the town in 1829 had increased to three thousand individuals by 1840. This was due not only to the birthrate but also to a considerable number of conversions and a significant influx of immigrants from Ireland. The famous Frederick Faber, although received into the Catholic Church in Northampton, was ordained priest in Derby (April 1847) and went on to become the head of the London Oratory.

Canon Thomas Sing (in Derby 1831-69) was editor of the Derby Reprints, one of the very many Catholic publications to issue from the press of Thomas Richardson, a Derby printer who converted to Catholicism in 1853 but had been publishing Catholic literature for a couple of decades before that. The Sisters of Mercy came to Derby from Kinsale in 1849. Their influence on the Church's development in Derby and the area around it since then until the present has been very significant. The initial parish of St. Mary has fathered (or mothered), grandfathered (or grandmothered) most of the later parishes in the town and beyond.

14. Turning to Leicestershire, which had seven missions with resident priests in 1850, we notice particularly the influence of the religious orders of men on the development of the parishes in that county.

Leicester. Holy Cross, the mother parish of the town, had Dominicans in residence there from 1114. But the sons of St. Dominic had been chaplains to the Turville family at Aston Flamville Hall for at least forty years before that. And they were responsible for Hinckley from 1766 until September 1989.

Shepshed - or rather, the chapel at Grace Dieu not far from there - was the centre of the missionary work of the Rosminian, Fr. Luigi Gentili, from 1842 until his early death six years later.

In 1841, the Rosminians took charge of Loughborough, founded in the early 1830s by Fr. Benjamin Hulme, an English convert; and they have been there ever since.

In addition to their commitments to education at Ratcliffe College and Grace Dieu Preparatory School, the Rosminian fathers and brothers have had an important influence on the development of the parishes in the central part of North Leicestershire.

Not to be underestimated either is the work of the Cistercian monks of Mount Saint Bernard who, for a good part of the nineteenth century, did a degree of missionary work principally In the area around the monastery. In fact, it has been suggested that the parish of Whitwick may have been founded to cater for the spiritual needs of the Irish labourers who came over to work on the construction of the monastic buildings.

15. Which brings us to Lincolnshire which had, in 1850, eleven missions with resident priests, the highest county total tor the whole Diocese.

Although Barton-on·Humber may have had its first Mass centre (1841) and its first resident priest (1842) in response to a wave of Irish immigrants coming to the area, Boston - at the other end of the county - definitely had its 'Irish town'; and by 1844 it was reported that up to eight hundred Irish per day were arriving in Stamford by train from Liverpool!

But perhaps the main characteristic of the Lincolnshire missions of 1860 was their dependence on committed Catholic landed families such as the Cliffords (Irnham, the Webbs (Worlaby – later transferred to Brigg), the Heneages (Sixhills - later Hainton), the Youngs (Osgodby) and the Knights (Market Rasen), Coupled with this was the presence of the Jesuits which never

entirely failed in the county throughout Penal Times. In Lincoln these two elements were happily combined in the person of the Jesuit Father Richard Knight (of the Kingerby and Market Rasen family), who served the Lincoln mission from 1784 until 1793, the year of his death.

16. So we see a number of factors contributing to the establishment of the original missions of 1850. These were: a. The landed gentry, many of whom who had kept their Catholic faith intact throughout Penal Times. b. The exiled clergy from France who had sought refuge in Protestant England and sought to repay that debt by missionary work. c. The converts of various social ranks. d. The Irish immigrants. e. The religious orders of men and of women.

As time went on, the second of these factors was, for obvious reasons, to disappear. But the first was to continue for at least the remainder of the century although by and large the age of the gentry as 'patrons' of the missions was past. As to the fourth factor, I have no figures. But I guess it would be true to say that, in addition to further immigrants from Ireland, the descendants of the Irish settlers continued to swell the numbers of Catholics. Very many thoroughly English Catholics even at the present Ume have Irish forebears on one or both sides of their families. And the religious orders - of men and of women continue even today to play a role in the growth of the Catholic Church and hence in the development of the parishes of the Diocese of Nottingham.

17. In April 1890, Edward Gilpin Bagshawe, Third Bishop of Nottingham, made his five-yearly official visit to Rome. The Diocese of Nottingham had been in existence for forty years by now; and Bagshawe had been in charge of it for sixteen of these years. It seems a good time to stop and look at some of the things that had happened since 1860. To help us do so, we have a copy of the report which the bishop had prepared for his visit.

He stated: "At the present time there are in the Diocese only fifty-six missions with a resident priest for the care of the mission."

As it happens, his calculations were slightly out. He himself had listed fifty-seven places; and for some inexplicable reason he had omitted Newark, which was certainly thriving. So the true figure is fifty-eight.

As before, I propose to select a few parishes from each county in turn.

18. We begin again with Nottinghamshire.

In 1867, Fr. John Harnett, ordained three years earlier, was sent from the Cathedral to be the first resident priest in the Hockley/Lace Market area of Nottingham, to cater for the Irish who lived there. He was to be the founder of St. Patrick’s parish where he spent the remaining forty-two years of his life, a record which was beaten only when Canon Philip Soar died last year after

forty-nine years in the parish!

Ten years later, Bishop Bagshawe founded - in the space of a single year - four parishes in Nottingham. These were: Sacred Heart, Carlton St. Augustine St. Edward St. Mary, Hyson Green.

Significant is that the last three of these were founded in connection with communities of religious sisters. The first convent of the Sisters of Nazareth in Nottingham was in St. Augustine's parish. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace began in St. Edward's. And the Little Company of Mary started off in Hyson Green. The chapels of these three convents were used as the first Mass centres of new parishes. When we take into consideration the various apostolates carried out by these and other congregations of women religious in the Diocese, we can at least begin to appreciate how much the development of the parishes owes to their dedicated zeal founded on their lives of prayer.

Lord Walter Kerr of Melbourne in Derbyshire about 1880 leased a house for a priest at Eastwood. In this house was a chapel where Mass was said until a church was built - also by the Kerr family, who were to found the parish of Melbourne and Castle Donington early in the twentieth century.

By 1890, the priest had been withdrawn from Hyson Green, birthplace of the Little Company of Mary; and for some years the parish was served from the Cathedral. There were about three hundred Catholics in Hucknall (founded 1879) and most of these were coalminers, wrote Bishop Bagshawe in his report to Rome.

In June 1877, a Mrs. White gave the Manor House at Mansfield to the Bishop. This gesture marked the beginning of the parish of St. Philip Neri, founder of the Congregation of the Oratory from which Bagshawe had come. By 1890, the Bishop had handed over the land together with the buildings on it a school-chapel, presbytery and Convent of Mercy - to the Diocese.

19. The number of missions with resident priests in Derbyshire trebled in the first four decades of the Diocese's existence and stood at nineteen in 1890.

The town of Derby still had only one parish; but a chapel had been opened from St. Mary's which, before the end of the century, was to become the centre of the Parish of St. Joseph.

Chesterfield, now in the Diocese of Hallam, got its first parish - run by Jesuits - in 1853; while Glossop’s second - St. Mary - was founded in 1882, its beautiful church being paid for from a legacy of a wealthy mill-owner, Francis Sumner.

Hassop, one of the original parishes of 1850, had opened a 'tin chapel' at Bakewell. Hadfield, Marple Bridge and Derwent were all founded by the Dukes of Norfolk whose chaplain at Derwent Hall also looked after the school-chapel at Bamford.

Bamford (now in Hallam Diocese) later became the place where the priest resided. Which was just as well since the village of Derwent was later covered by the waters of the Ladybower Reservoir, the only one of our parishes to have sunk without trace!

Clay Cross was founded in 1862 from Ilkeston, and the mission was dedicated to Saint Patrick and St. Bridget which may give some sort of clue as to the country of origin of many of the parishioners! Soon Clay Cross established a chapel at Alfreton which was later to become the priest's place of residence. In Bishop Brindle's time, this mission was to attract more than a little attention when the parish priest made public his reasons for disagreeing (justifiably, in my opinion) with the bishop's policy regarding a private chapel in the home of a wealthy parishioner.

At Newhall (later to be shifted to Swadlincote), the Countess of Loudoun had built a large school-chapel and presbytery; but she still, in 1890, retained ownership of the land on which they stood.

Ilkeston was the first of the parishes to be founded in the Erewash Valley. The letter which Bishop Roskell wrote to Father Charles William Tasker, whom he sent there early in 1858, is very instructive. In part it reads as follows.

"There are upwards of five hundred Catholics in Ilkeston and its immediate neighbourhood, without a chapel or even a school to meet in, or any requisite for Divine service. All has to be commenced, and everything has to be provided. …You will find your flock poor, but most willing to their utmost to secure the services of a resident pastor amongst them. Whatever assistance I myself can give you, you shall have; and I recommend you and the work you have undertaken most warmly to all the clergy and laity of the diocese, and beg of the to assist you; and I hereby authorise you to collect for the purpose of establishing the mission at Ilkeston, and of building a suitable school and church."

20. The county town of Leicestershire had two new parishes by 1890: St. Patrick’s, founded and administered - until 1894 - by the Dominicans from Holy Cross; and Sacred Heart (1882).

St. Patrick's, near to the city centre, would later open a chapel of ease dedicated to Our Lady of Good Counsel. This subsequently became the parish church. In 1940, St. Patrick's Church closed, but the parish retained the double title until a priest took up residence in the new St. Patrick's parish on the Beaumont Leys Estate in 1981.

The mission at Market Harborough was successor to the chaplaincy maintained by the Neville family at Husbands Bosworth Hall. Mass had been celebrated in Harborough from 1858; a priest took up residence there in 1812; and the present church was built five years later. But there was a priest in residence at Bosworth until 1941.

Lutterworth, always one of the smallest and most remote parishes of the Diocese, owes its origin to the Earl of Denbigh whose chaplain came from Monks Kirby (1814 onwards) to Mass there on a regular basis. In 1880, the Earl gave land and money for a church at Lutterworth and Lord Braye of Stanford Hall promised to support a priest on condition that he served his private chapel also. Thus began the pastorate of Canon Alfred Hazeland, who still holds the record for length of time in one parish – sixty years. In 1911, a community of Poor Clares from France moved to Lutterworth. Eleven years later, the French members of the community returned to their mother country. The English-speaking sisters soldiered on for a few more years; but the community was dispersed in 1925. (Before the end of the decade, a group of Poor Clares came from Manchester to Nottingham where they settled in Bulwell.)

A church had been built at Barrow-on-Soar by voluntary labour in 1839. It became independent from Loughborough in 1818, but was united with Sileby in 1885. In 1941, it was attached to Birstall and in 1972 was once more united with Sileby. The Barrow church was closed in 1989.

Melton Mowbray, one of the original missions, was – along with its parent, Eastwell - being served from the Cathedral in 1890.

21. Grimsby, in that part of Lincolnshire now called South Humberside, was the very first mission to be founded in the new Diocese. Before the end of 1860, a priest was sent to this seaport for the benefit of the many Irishmen engaged in the construction of the new docks. Mr. Young of Kingerby, a member of the family responsible for the first church at Market Rasen (1782) and for that at Osgodby (1793), paid for the erection of the present church of St. Mary in 1883.

The same gentleman was the principal benefactor of Crowle founded as a Mass centre from Gainsborough and served until relatively recently by the Premonstratensian Canons who, prior to the Reformation, had pastoral responsibility for some thirty parishes in the county.

In 1890, Gainsborough, which had had its own priest since 1861, was also serving Retford in Nottinghamshire. Crowle meanwhile had established a chapel at Luddington in the late 1810s.

Spalding, yet another of Mr. Young's 'children', has been served by the Premonstratensians from 1875 until the present.

In Sleaford a mission begun in 1819 for the benefit of Irish harvesters, a beautiful church was built and endowed by two benefactresses in 1888. Irnham had vanished from the map by 1890.

This happened in the following dramatic fashion. In the early 1850s, Irnham - which had been in Catholic hands for nigh on three hundred years - was sold to a man who was quite antiCatholic. He insisted that the chapel built on the estate in 1826 by the Sixth Baron Clifford of Chudleigh be demolished and that the priest who served it be found alternative accommodation. After a lot of trouble, the Diocese was able to secure some compensation. It could have the chapel - but the chapel could not remain at Irnham.

So, as Canon John Gascoyne, the priest there at the time wrote on alternate pages of the baptism register: "the chapel…..was taken down the middle of December 1855. The materials amounting to about a thousand loads were transferred to Corby [Glen] by the middle of April 18 and the new edifices were begun there at the end of March 1856....

Mass was said in the new church 8th March 1857."

So Corby Glen became the new centre of the parish until it was superseded by one of its daughters, Bourne. It is currently served from Grantham.

22. In 1850, there were no places with resident priests in Rutland. But forty years later there was a chapel at Exton belonging to the Earl of Gainsborough; and the priest also served the chapel of Saints Joseph and Edith at Oakham. Although for some time Exton and Oakham each had their own priest, before 1981 there were reunited and the priest now lives in the county town, Oakham.

23. In this second stage of the development of the parishes, we note a great expansion due to several factors. These include the spread of the congregations of religious women, the influx of people from Ireland and the arrival of the Premonstratensians in Lincolnshire. But we also see a number of missions owing their origin to fairly well-to-do people who wished to do something for God and His Church - a throwback to the 'ages of faith' perhaps? However, many of these missions, having been founded by people with money, continued to exist, thrive and branch out through the self-sacrifice and generosity of people without very much money.

And we must not fall to pay generous tribute to the hard work of the clergy of this period and to the inspiration and encouragement given to them and their flocks by Bishops Roskell and Bagshawe.

24. In its centenary year, the Diocese of Nottingham, which still had its original boundaries, looked like this.

• • • •

There were 98 parishes with resident priests (21 in 1850) The Catholic population had increased from 20,000 to 86,345 The 3 convents of 1850 had become 39 a century later and The 19 secular priests on active service had become 130.

It is fitting then to pause and take a glance at some of the parishes which had sprung up since we last stopped midway through Bishop Bagshawe's episcopate.

25. For Nottinghamshire, all the parishes I have chosen are in or on the fringes of the county town.

Immediately after the First World War, it became evident that Nottingham was likely to expand in a north-easterly direction. With a degree of farsightedness not always shown in human affairs, Father Edwin Henson, Secretary to Bishop Dunn, began, in 1922, to say Mass in a house in Front Street, Arnold. Several years later, he purchased the land on which, in 1929, the first church was built - to be replaced by the present church in 1964. One can date the foundation of the parish to 1933, since from that year there has always been a priest resident in the parish. Arnold was soon to become - and to remain - one of the busiest parishes of the diocese. In 1929, the Little Company of Mary moved to Arnold from West Bridgford where they were always getting flooded. Nottingham Prison and the City Hospital were made the responsibility of the parish from the mid-1940s. A primary school was opened in 1961 and a secondary school some twenty years later. A Mass centre, later to be attached to Southwell, was opened at Calverton in 1963; and the parish got its own chapel-of-ease, St. Gilbert's, in the mid1960s. Between the two World Wars, some eight thousand houses were built by Nottingham Corporation on the Aspley, Broxtowe, Bells Lane and Bilborough Estates. In the early 1930s, a bus ferried people from what was to become the Aspley parish to Bulwell for Sunday Mass. In 1936, the first part of the site on which the church and presbytery at St. Teresa now stand was purchased. And the first Mass in the parish was celebrated on 7 November 1937.

Representatives of parish organisations wrote, in April 1946, to the Parish Priest of Hyson Green under whose wing the new congregation fell. In the letter they asked for a building of their own since - at this time - Mass was being celebrated in a local school. After some hesitation, permission was granted and the wooden hut which preceded the present church was erected early in 1947. Later that year, the first parish priest took up residence. In 1968, the church which had been erected at Bilborough (preceded, as so often, by a wooden hut) became the focal point of the new parish of St. Hugh.

Beeston had its first resident priest in 1884; but after a year he moved his place of residence to Long Eaton. Three years later, another priest came to live at Beeston - and he lasted only a : few months! The mission was closed for the next eight years and for the following five was served from the Cathedral. It was only from 1900 that Beeston has had, without interruption, a resident priest. The parish's main claim to fame at present is that, since November 1992, it has been the principal centre in the Diocese for Perpetual Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.

St. Paul's, Lenton, has had a similar fate to Beeston with two failed attempts, beginning in 1897, before a priest came to reside permanently from 1929. But it did provide Mass at Wollaton from 1941; and Wollaton later became a separate parish.

Bulwell had its first Mass centre from 1881 (served from Hucknall) and its first chapel in 1885.

Again it was a case of fits and starts; and it is only since 1924 that the parish has continuously had a priest in residence.

These last three parishes illustrate the point made by Canon Sweeney to the effect that their temporary failures and final success are "typical of the age of their foundation; it was an area [i.e. era - misprint in original source] of immense spiritual destitution, there was so much ground to be made up and the resources at the disposal of Bishop Bagshawe were so desperately inadequate to his schemes" (Centenary Book, p. 34).

26. We move on to Derbyshire.

Early in the nineteenth century, Belper was the second largest town In the county. This was due to the textile Industry. As early as November 1853, the Cathedral Chapter "agreed that there was an immediate necessity of beginning a mission at Belper as soon as means could be provided." Here, as so often, was the nub of the matter. Man does not live only on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God; he also needs material things like money! Even though the Sisters of Mercy had a house in the town 1857-81 with accommodation for a priest, and their chapel was open to the public, no priest ever resided there for any length of time until 1909. The present church was opened ten years later, and a chapel-of-ease at Duffield in 1981.

The Franciscan Minoresses came to Belper in 1936.

In 1885, Bishop Bagshawe wrote in his 'Ad Limina' report that, even though there had been a small church in Tideswell for many years, there had been no priest there because there were no Catholics. The reason why the Bishop attempted to revive the mission at all was, it has been suggested, because his forebears came from that part of Derbyshire! By 1890, there were Just over forty Catholics in the mission which, from 1901 to 1922, had no resident priest but from 1934 to 1944 looked after Chapel-en-Ie-Frith. At the end of this period, the priest moved to Chapel and Tideswell became, and still is, a chapel-of-ease.

The first Mass was celebrated at Long Eaton in 1883 and the following year a tin chapel ('capella ex ferro constructa') was opened. There has been a resident priest since 1895. The beginning of the Catholic revival In the town was not without incident. A series of articles and letters in the 'Long Eaton Advertiser' included a comment to the effect that the priest of Long Eaton had made a mistake in coming to the town. For, one gentleman wrote to the editor: "He may collect a few Irish labourers, a few women and girls, but the Pope's influence will not be very great for some time in Long Eaton because the people have too much good sense”. Melbourne has had its own priest since 1908, the year in which a disused laundry at Melbourne Hall was turned into a temporary chapel prior to the building of the present church two years later. The parish, which has had a chapel-of-ease at Castle Donington since 1922, owes its origin to the generosity of the Kerr family of Melbourne Hall. Church and presbytery remained in the ownership of the family until 1982 when they were handed over to the Diocese.

27. In the year of the foundation of the Diocese, Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire had a Mass centre which was served sometimes by Whitwick and sometimes by Mount Saint Bernard Abbey. This closed in 1870. In the 1890s, under the auspices of the Countess of Loudoun (she was responsible also for Measham – 1883 - and SwadIincote - 1884), Mass began to be said once again in Ashby, initially once a month. A temporary church was erected in 1906, and the present imposing building, paid for by the Fifteenth Duke of Norfolk, in memory of his wife, a daughter of the Countess of Loudoun, ten years later. Ashby became a parish in 1924.

Coalville was one of the many parishes whose beginnings date back to the 1890s. The priest from Whitwick came over to celebrate a Sunday Mass in a private house. But after nine months, the congregation got too big so a dance hall was rented for the purpose. At 7/6d (31.6p) per hour this proved to be beyond the meagre resources of the congregation.

However, a local non-Catholic came to the rescue and offered the use of his theatre free of charge! After Bishop Bagshawe had inspected it and given his approval something which was not self-evident since theatres did not always have a good reputation - the kind offer was accepted.

Within a couple of years, a temporary chapel dedicated to St. Saviour was built. This was replaced by the present church of St. Wilfrid of York in 1981.

"The early history of" St. Peter's, Leicester, writes Canon Sweeney, "follows the pattern common at the end of the last century. A priest was sent to the district with the Bishop’s blessing and very little else." In its first seven years, this parish had seven priests. But the seventh, Francis Caus from Belgium, stayed for twenty-eight years. Stability of leadership is vital for any new venture; and St. Peter's Parish, from which two other city parishes were subsequently to be founded, is a very good example of this fact of life.

One of these parishes was Blessed Sacrament. Braunstone. Although Initially planned as a chapel-of-ease to St. Peter's (an interesting letter of Bishop Dunn outlining his policy on such matters survives), it became a parish in its own right when the Blessed Sacrament Fathers set up their house there in 1938. They remained there until 1990 when they handed over to the diocesan clergy.

28. St. Mary's, Grimsby, in 1921 opened a Mass centre at Cleethorpes in that part of Lincolnshire now known as South Humberside. The town received a permanent church in

1930 (this is currently in the process of being replaced) and became an independent parish in in 1937. The following year the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace opened a nursing home there.

Iron ore was discovered in the area to the north west of Brigg in the second half of the nineteenth century. This meant an increase of population. In pursuit of his policy of bringing the Mass to industrial centres, Bishop Bagshawe, in 1897, sent a priest to what subsequently became Holy Souls, Scunthorpe. But it did not prove possible - probably for financial reasons (as we saw earlier, this aspect of life has been very influential in decisions about founding parishes) - to keep a priest there until 1907. In the 1950s, Holy Souls was to give birth to St. Bernadette's Parish. Father Peter Sabela, who along with his brother Monsignor Herman Sabela, had come over to England to escape the 'Kulturkampf', was a man of enormous energy.

While Parish Priest of Boston, he laid the foundations of no less than five parishes.

Skegness was the first of these - in 1877. To begin with, there was Mass on one weekday per month; later this was increased to every Sunday. In 1888, Skegness was closed. But eight years later, a fresh start was made - again by Fr. Sabela, who by this time was Parish Priest of Grantham! A small brick church, dedicated to The Sacred Heart and Our Lady of the Holy Souls, was opened in 1898 and the parish seems to have become independent a t this time.

Woodhall Spa was another of Fr. Sabela's efforts with a first Mass in 1895, a church the following year and the status of an independent parish in 1900. There has not always been a priest in residence there; and for most of the 1930s, the parish was served by the Capuchin Friars from Panton College. Currently (1994), Woodhall Spa also serves Horncastle and Spilsby.

29. This third period covered the end of the Victorian era and the two World Wars with a time of economic recession in between.

The development of the parishes of the Diocese was characterized by a number of starts and re-starts for which an explanation was suggested earlier. The increase in the number of parishes during this period was consequent upon the growth of new housing developments and upon the pressure put upon diocesan authorities by groups of lay people to give them premises in which to worship and socialise as well as a resident pries t. At the same time, these groups pledged and almost invariably gave their wholehearted support in providing the money necessary for such ventures.

30. Four parishes were taken from Nottinghamshire and seven from Derbyshire to form the southern part of the new Diocese of Hallam in 1980. Hence we make our final stopping point in 1981.

Between 1960 and 1981, the number of parishes in the Nottingham conurbation rose from twelve to fifteen; In the Derby conurbation from four to ten and in that of Leicester from nine to thirteen. The city of Lincoln acquired its third parish.

31. Nottinghamshire In 1956, one Father James McGuinness left the security and seclusion of Bishop's House, where he had been Secretary for three years, to establish a Catholic presence on the newly-built Clifton Estate. Ten years later, after a vast amount of hard work by priest and parishioners, a magnificent church seating some six hundred persons was opened by Bishop Ellis.

Bilborough, whose temporary church (served from Aspley) had been opened as early as 1960, was given a permanent building in the mld1960s and became an independent parish in October 1968.

From the early 1960s, a number of housing estates sprang up in the area between Bulwell, Hucknall and Arnold. A church was built and served from Bulwell in the mid1960s; and the Parish of Bestwood was constituted when, shortly before Christmas 1971, Father Eastwood moved into a house on Mosswood Crescent. In the 1970s, many people from the Meadows area, a good part of which was being reconstructed, moved into these new estates.

The Holy Ghost Fathers opened a House of Studies at Upton Hall in 1946. It was in 1948 that a Mass centre, served from Newark, was begun in the nearby market-town of Southwell. When Bishop Ellis, in the presence of the Provost of Southwell, opened the Church of Our Lady of Victories on 12 September 1962, he "spoke movingly...on Devotion to Our Lady as a common bond between Catholics and our Separated Brethren." Canon Farmer of the parent parish died two weeks later. Southwell had a chapel-of ease at Calverton, where the priest resided in the mid1980s. This was replaced last year (1993).

32. Derbyshire Of the conurbations, Derby showed the greatest increase in number of parishes in this period. I will refer briefly to four of them.

A piece of land was purchased at Chaddesden immediately after the Second World War and a hut-church was erected on it in 1948. As so often before and since, the people began to raise money; and then they asked the bishop to let them have a priest.

26 June 1955 marked the opening of the present church dedicated to St. Alban, patron of the college in Valladolid where Monsignor Hargreaves, the 'father' of the new parish, had trained for the priesthood.

Mackworth, a housing estate off the Derby to Ashbourne road, was founded from St. Mary's in 1960. It has been unusual in that, like Mickleover further over to the west of the Derby conurbation and founded at about the same time, it has had a resident priest since the beginning. The church-cum-community centre at Mackworth gave way to the present church in 1972, and the parish now houses the Diocesan Centre.

An early attempt to establish a parish in the Borrowash-Spondon area was abandoned when a chapel-of-ease was opened at Alvaston in 1909. But in 1946 Borrowash House was purchased for the Diocesan Rescue Society and had its own chaplain. A parish priest was appointed to Borrowash in 1961.

33. Leicestershire It may be recalled that St. Patrick's. Leicester, was the first parish to be founded from Holy Cross as long ago as 1854.

Eighty-six years later, it was swallowed up by its own chapel-of-ease, Our Lady of Good Counsel, which then took the title 'Our Lady and St. Patrick.' But, nine years after its official death in 1940, the nucleus of a new St. Patrick's on the Beaumont Leys Estate was formed and got its own priest in 1961.

One of the parishes to spring from St. Peter's, Leicester, was Mother of God on the New Parks Estate. It began, as usual, with Sunday Mass in a temporary building to be followed, in 1967, by the permanent church.

St. Pius X, Narborough, founded from Braunstone which in its turn had been founded from St. Peter's, got a Mass centre in 1946 and a church in 1948. It became independent in 1966.

Although the Eyres Monsell Estate in Leicester was not built until the 1960s, St. John Bosco Parish really began when a boys'-club-cum-Mass-centre was built just off Saffron Lane. From the end of the 1960s, St. John Bosco had its own priest and the Mass centre on Saffron Lane became the parish church. In 1965, a Mass centre which doubled up as a parish hall was opened on the Eyres Monsell Estate. In fact, this was one of the first bingo halls in the area and -was very popular-, even as late as 1980, with the locals. It was replaced, in 1984, by the present church and the church on Saffron Lane was closed.

34. Lincolnshire Although land for a church had been bought in the Boultham area of Lincoln during the First World War, Mass was not celebrated on a regular basis in this part of the town until 1944.

A church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, was opened in 1968 and given its own priest, thus becoming Lincoln's third parish.

With considerable financial assistance from the sister of Baron Heneage, a second parish (St. Peter's) founded in Grimsby in 1909. For more than thirty years It was cared for by one of the Belgian priests who have given such valuable service to our Diocese. Because of expansion in the town and a shift of population a church dedicated to St. Pius X was opened in another part of Grimsby in 1956. St. Peter's was demolished in 1969 although there is now a chapel-of-ease (served from St. Pius X) under that title.

This last period has seen the establishment of a second parish, St. Bernadette's, at Scunthorpe, cut off from its parent, Holy Souls, in 1954.

35. Our final section covering the last thirteen years must needs be brief.

Warsop (near Mansfield), St. Edward's, Leicester and East Leake (Leics.) no longer have a resident priest; and Allestree (founded in the early 1910s) has been reunited with its parent parish, St. Mary's, Derby. Religious congregations of men have withdrawn from parishes in various parts of the Diocese: the Dominicans from Hinckley, the Blessed Sacrament Fathers from Leicester and the Conventual Franciscans from South Lincolnshire.

But a team-ministry is making tentative beginnings in the Grimsby-Immingham-Cleethorpes area. And there are many other signs of hope of which the Nottingham Pilgrims are an obvious example.

36. As we look at the history of the Church and, in particular, the development of the parishes within the Diocese of Nottingham, we see expansion and contraction, ebb and flow, new birth, transmutation and re-absorption. We see openings and closings, advances and withdrawals, successes and failures.

Yet all these are part of our history. And it is in and through history that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of Jesus Christ works his mysterious purposes with – and sometimes without - our cooperation.