ROMAN CATHOLICISM
The clergy and nearly all lay people in Chester conformed with the Elizabethan religious settlement, and
recusancy remained numerically weak and socially
insignificant throughout Elizabeth's reign. (fn. 1) The handful of J.P.s and aldermen whose loyalty was suspected
by the authorities in 1564 never became open recusants, and the only prominent citizens against whom
proceedings were taken in the 1570s and later were a
merchant, two lawyers, and several members of the
Aldersey family. Of them only the lawyer Ralph
Worsley proved obdurate. The searching enquiries
made in 1592 revealed only forty actual or suspected
recusants in the city. Recusancy was mainly confined to
a few artisan families under the leadership of the
Catholic gentry of west Cheshire, notably the Masseys
of Waverton. The priests who served them probably
lodged in gentry houses in the countryside. Ironically
the main centre of Catholic activity in the city in the
late 16th century was the castle, where recusants from
elsewhere in Cheshire were gaoled in the 1580s and
1590s. The keepers of the castle gaol were lax and
corrupt: some prisoners had liberty to walk about the
city, priests were able to slip in to say mass, and one
keeper's son became a convert.
Chester's importance in the history of recusancy was
rather as a place frequented by Catholics travelling to
Ireland. In 1594–5, for example, three groups of youths
from other parts of the country were captured as they
were trying to make their way abroad for a Catholic
education, and presumably many others before and
afterwards passed through the city without being
apprehended. The town was also close to the strongly
recusant districts of north-east Wales, which included
the pilgrimage centre of Holywell (Flints.). There was,
nevertheless, enough of a recusant community resident
in Chester by the 1590s to provide safe houses for those
en route for Ireland and to arrange for a prisoner who
escaped from Northgate gaol to get clean away.
The features of Roman Catholicism in Chester
established in the 16th century remained the norm
until the early 19th. (fn. 2) It was the religion of a small,
tightly knit group of families, mainly small tradespeople but including representatives of all classes
except the governing élite, with wider leadership and
refuges for priests provided by the Catholic country
gentry. From 1622 the city was mainly served by Jesuit
priests of the northern district. One active in 1654,
Robert Grosvenor, was related to the Grosvenors of
Eaton Hall, but the main gentry support came from the
Fitzherberts of Swynnerton Hall (Staffs.), who had a
house in Northgate ward. The number of Catholics,
probably always under-recorded, rose only slowly.
Sixteen were listed in the early 17th century; probably
15 in 1678; 104, including women and children, in
1705–6; and 130 individuals in perhaps 81 households
in 1767. (fn. 3) The last figure accords well with the 138
sittings apparently provided at the chapel opened in
1799. (fn. 4) The continuing presence of even such small
numbers was in part due to immigration; in 1767
perhaps a quarter of the Catholic families bore surnames of Irish, Scots, Welsh, or (in one case) French
origin. (fn. 5)
Until the 1750s there was no permanently resident
priest in Chester, masses being said either by a
gentleman's chaplain, typically from Hooton Hall in
Wirral or the Fitzherberts' house. From 1758, however,
an almost continuous series of settled priests can be
traced. Until 1838 they were normally, perhaps always,
Lancastrians trained in the English seminary at Douai
(Nord) or its successors, Crook Hall (in Brancepeth,
co. Dur.) and Ushaw College (in Lanchester, co. Dur.).
A permanent chapel was probably in use from the
1750s and by 1789 services were held in an upper room
in Foregate Street. In 1799 the congregation built and
registered a chapel near by on the west side of Queen
Street. It was perhaps largely paid for by the Irish
merchants who headed the list of those for whom
perpetual masses were afterwards said. (fn. 6) They were
very likely men who frequented Chester on business
rather than permanent residents.
The Irish Catholic population of Chester grew
rapidly in the 19th century, especially after the Irish
famines of 1821 and the 1840s. (fn. 7) In 1826 the priest
appealed for help for the many destitute Irish among
his flock. In the 1830s many people born in counties
Mayo, Roscommon, Galway, and Clare were settled in
the city, and the Irish-born population reached over
1,000 by 1841, concentrated into a small area in and
around Steven Street, between Boughton and the canal.
There were also some Italian Catholic immigrants in
the earlier 19th century, mainly shopkeepers. The
average annual number of Catholic baptisms rose
from 4 in the decade 1794–1803 to 20 in 1814–23,
48 in 1824–33, 63 in 1834–43, 86 in 1844–53, and 115
in 1854–63. Numbers attending mass in mid century
were estimated at c. 700 at the bishop of Shrewsbury's
first visitation in 1850, and 800 as the average Sunday
attendance when the religious census was taken in
1851; the actual total attendance on Census Sunday
in the latter year, however, was 570 adults and 100
children. (fn. 8) The growth in numbers later must have been
due more to the natural increase of the settled population than to continuing immigration. There were an
estimated 2,800 Catholics in Chester in 1889, 4,800 in
1929, 7,000 in 1951, and 10,000 in 1974. (fn. 9) As a
proportion of the total population that represented a
steady increase from probably under 8 per cent in the
1880s to about 12 per cent in the 1970s. (fn. 10)
The chapel in Queen Street was soon too small.
Franciscan Capuchin friars from Pantasaph (in Whitford, Flints.) established a mission in Cuppin Street in
1858, saying mass first in a room and later in a
temporary building, both located in Watergate Row
South, before laying the foundation stone of a chapel in
Grosvenor Street in 1862. The bankruptcy of the
builder, an earth tremor, and a hurricane thwarted
initial plans, but a temporary building, seating 500, was
opened in 1864 and replaced in 1873–5 by the church
of St. Francis. The friary behind the church in Cuppin
Street was completed in 1876 and enlarged in the 20th
century. (fn. 11)
Suburban churches were opened as the Catholic
population moved away from the central area after
the Second World War. In Upton masses were said in
the village hall from 1939 and a church was opened in
Plas Newton Lane in 1964. A parish for Blacon was
established in 1956, and a church opened there in
1959. A church for south Chester was built by the
Franciscans from the city-centre friary in 1960 on the
Lache council estate. (fn. 12)
The earliest modern religious order established in
Chester was the Faithful Companions of Jesus, who ran
schools from their convent in Dee House, Little St.
John Street, from 1854 to 1925, when they were
replaced by the Ursulines, who left when the school
closed in 1976. (fn. 13) The nursing order of the Little Sisters
of the Assumption was established in Queen Street in
1911, building St. Augustine's convent and chapel in
1913 on land in Union Street given by Margaret
Collins. They were succeeded there in 1957 by the
Irish Sisters of Charity. (fn. 14) In 1976 there were also Sisters
of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of Mercy, in Cliveden
Road, Lache. (fn. 15) In 1995 the only order in the city apart
from the Franciscans was a group of Benedictine nuns
recently established in Curzon Park. (fn. 16)
The many Roman Catholic social organizations
which flourished from the mid 19th century were
based in the early 20th at no. 34 Queen Street, which
closed in 1972 and was replaced in 1975 by a social
centre in the former Bowling Green Hotel in Brook
Street. (fn. 17)
Buildings
The old church of St. Werburgh, Queen Street, was a
plain building in Classical style, of stuccoed brick with
a Doric portico under a pediment, two panels with
garlands decorating the upper wall, and tall roundarched windows in the side walls. An adjoining house
became the presbytery and there was a burial ground to
the rear. The chapel was converted into a school when
a replacement church was opened in 1875 and was
demolished during the redevelopment of Queen Street
in 1966. (fn. 18)
Figure 92:
St. Werburgh's
The new church of St. Werburgh was built between
1873 and 1875 to designs by Edmund Kirby of Liverpool, and extended in 1904 and 1914. (fn. 19) The site,
fronting Grosvenor Park Road, required a reversed
orientation. The church, built of pale yellow sandstone
under a steeply pitched slate roof, has Early English
details. It consists of an apsidal west sanctuary with a
polygonal vestry adjoining it on the north and a
western ambulatory, and a tall nave of six bays with
north and south aisles and a gabled east porch. All the
windows are single lancets. There is a side altar flanking
the high altar to the south, and an organ in the
corresponding bay on the north. The pulpit was
given by Patrick Collins in 1894. (fn. 20) The adjoining
presbytery in Union Street is a red-brick house of
two storeys with attics, enlivened by blue headers and
prominent chimney stacks.
Figure 93:
St. Columba's
The church of St. Francis was designed by James
O'Byrne of Liverpool in uncoursed sandstone with a
slate roof. (fn. 21) It comprises a sanctuary flanked by shallow
recesses for side altars, a wide aisleless nave of seven
bays, and a small west porch. There are two further
altars in the north wall, two confessionals in the south
wall, and a west gallery. The west wall has two twolight windows with Decorated tracery but the nave
windows are without tracery. The building debt was
paid off through bequests from the Tatlock family in
1899. (fn. 22)
St. Theresa, Blacon Avenue, was designed by Reynolds and Scott in pale red pressed brick with stone
dressings and flat roofs. (fn. 23) It consists of a sanctuary of
one bay with a shallow polygonal apse, a tall nave,
slightly raised over the western entrance, low north and
south aisles, and a slender south-east tower. A west
gallery over the lobby carries an organ. The attached
presbytery stands to the north-east.
St. Clare, Downsfield Road, Lache, also by Reynolds
and Scott, (fn. 24) is built in pale red and yellow pressed brick
with tiled roofs. It comprises a sanctuary of two bays, a
low north-east vestry, north and south transepts, a nave
of four bays, and a slender south-west tower. The gabled
end walls of the transepts and the west nave wall each
have a small central hexagonal window circled by seven
smaller ones, all filled with coloured glass. The nave and
sanctuary windows are plain pointed arches with mullions. Inside there is a west organ gallery over the lobby,
and confessionals are built into the north wall.
St. Columba, Plas Newton Lane, was designed in a
non-traditional style by L. A. G. Prichard, Son, and
Partners, (fn. 25) using a variety of walling materials and
copper roofs (Fig. 93). The ground plan is a symmetrical polygon, essentially half an octagon. A pyramidal spire rises over the altar. The internal space,
apart from an enclosed lobby under an open organ loft,
is semi-circular, arranged with low benches facing a
semi-circular railed altar space against the east wall.
The wall above the altar has 15 small triangular
windows with red and blue glass. The lighting is
suspended in clusters from a high wooden ceiling.