ROMAN CATHOLICISM.
Recusants from Tottenham were indicted for a decade after 1583,
numbers reaching as many as ten in 1592. (fn. 96) The
most prominent were William Vaux, Lord Vaux of
Harrowden, freed from the Fleet after harbouring
Edmund Campion, and his sons Henry and George. (fn. 97)
Vaux, although confined to a house which he rented
in Hackney, was often described as of Tottenham
and was apparently the centre of a circle which
extended into that parish. (fn. 98) Papists said to be resident included two gentlemen, Andrew Mallory and
Ferdinando Parris, and their wives. After further
indictments in 1608 and 1640, (fn. 99) no Roman Catholics
were recorded until the end of the 18th century.
French émigrés under Father, later Cardinal,
Cheverus (fn. 1) opened a chapel in Queen Street in 1793,
thereby starting the revival of Roman Catholic
worship on the northern fringe of London. (fn. 2) Bishop
John Douglas, vicar apostolic of the London district,
estimated that nearly 100 people attended in 1796, (fn. 3)
the year of Cheverus's departure for America. The
chapel, dedicated to St. Francis de Sales, was rebuilt
in Chapel Place, White Hart Lane, in 1826 and
reopened in 1827, when a school was established
near by. (fn. 4) In 1840 the congregation, normally small,
was swollen every summer by Irish workers; in 1851
the average attendance was estimated at 200 in the
morning and 100 in the evening. (fn. 5) From the 1860s
Archbishop, later Cardinal, Manning preached
annually at the chapel, in aid of the school. (fn. 6) Services
were transferred in 1882 to a new school in Brereton
Road, where a partition between schoolroom and
chapel was removed on Sundays; (fn. 7) the old chapel was
then sold, although the building survived, as a blouse
factory, for at least 30 years. (fn. 8) In 1895 another church
of St. Francis de Sales, designed some 7 years earlier
by J. and B. Sinnott of Liverpool, (fn. 9) was opened
between the school and High Road, at the south
corner of Brereton Road. (fn. 10) In 1972 it was a yellow-brick building, decorated with red bricks and stone
dressings, in the Gothic style; work on a new sanctuary and entrance had been completed in 1967, and
there was seating for 500.
At Wood Green the church of St. Paul was established in Station Road in 1882 (fn. 11) and certified in
1884. (fn. 12) A new brick church, designed by E. Goldie
in the Romanesque style, (fn. 13) was registered in 1904 (fn. 14)
and in turn gave way to a striking building designed
by John Rochford, of Sheffield, which was opened in
1971. The building, of white roughcast and brick, has
seating for 600; it is roughly triangular, with a sidechapel and a corridor-porch containing glass from
the old church, and adjoins a parish hall. (fn. 15)
In the south Jesuits established a college at Stamford Hill in 1894 (fn. 16) and registered the chapel of St.
Ignatius, on the west side of High Road, in 1896. (fn. 17)
The chapel, designed by Benedict Williamson, (fn. 18) was
replaced in 1903 (fn. 19) by a massive structure which
served both the parish and the college. (fn. 20) The new
church, also by Williamson, was built of greyishpurple brick with stone dressings in the style of a
Spanish Romanesque cathedral. It is cruciform in
plan, with a choir and aisled nave supported by flying
buttresses and two towers facing High Road. (fn. 21)
Roman Catholics at West Green worshipped
either at Wood Green or Stamford Hill until 1927,
when they opened a wooden church at no. 370 West
Green Road. (fn. 22) The building was enlarged in 1953
and moved a few yards to the west in 1958 to make
way for the brick and concrete church of St. John
Vianney, which was opened in 1959 and consecrated
in 1964. The new church held 480 people in 1972,
when the old wooden church served as a parish hall. (fn. 23)
The chapel of St. Bede, at the corner of Compton
Crescent and White Hart Lane, was built and
registered, (fn. 24) as part of a private school, in 1938.
After closure during the Second World War the
school was reopened by Jesuits and later made an
annexe to St. Thomas More's secondary school. No
classes were held there in 1972, when the building, a
plain yellow-brick hall, was used solely for Sunday
Mass and served from St. Francis de Sales. (fn. 25)
At the suggestion of Cardinal Manning a group of
Servite Sisters settled in Suffolk Lodge, on the south
side of St. Ann's Road, in 1871. The house, which
formed the nucleus of St. Mary's Priory, was refronted in 1876 and the neighbouring Priory Villa
and Leamington House were acquired in 1878. A
chapel was begun in 1880 and opened in 1883; it was
enlarged in 1906, when the priory too was extended,
with an eastern wing. In 1972 there were 42 sisters,
some of whom taught at St. Mary's school and others
farther afield; the community also included nurses,
retired sisters, and novices. (fn. 26)
Marist Sisters opened a convent next to the
church of St. Francis de Sales in 1888. The convent,
which for a time contained an orphanage and a
school, closed between 1913 and 1922. (fn. 27)
In 1903 the Daughters of Providence, from
France, acquired their first English premises by
leasing a house in Ruskin Road, Tottenham.
Encouraged by the Revd. John Nicholson, of St.
Paul's, Wood Green, they moved to Broseley Villas,
Bounds Green Road, and opened a school there in
1905. They moved again in 1907, to two large houses
in Stuart Crescent, where they later rented two more
houses and in 1921 they bought the Brabançonne, a
house in spacious grounds at the corner of Wood
Green High Road and Earlham Grove, as a senior
school. On the building of a new school in 1926, the
Brabançonne became a convent house for the nuns. (fn. 28)