Unlike its neighbours of Shropshire to the north and Worcestershire to the east, Herefordshire was not richly endowed with monastic establishments in the Middle Ages. Hereford Cathedral was of the Old Foundation, i.e. non-monastic. There was a Benedictine priory at Leominster and the Knights of St John (the Hospitallers) had commanderies at Dinmore and Garway.
Catholicism lingered on in remote Herefordshire after the Reformation in spite of the best efforts of John Scory, a former Dominican friar, Bishop of Hereford 1559-1585, to extirpate it. In the 17th century, Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester, was a Catholic convert and from Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire was able to provide a degree of protection to his co-religionists. St John Kemble (1599-1679) was born in Herefordshire and after 50 years of itinerant ministry was martyred at Hereford in the aftermath of the Popish Plot. He was canonised in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
The oldest place of continuous post-Reformation Catholic worship in Herefordshire is Rotherwas, just outside Hereford. The chapel (of Our Lady of the Assumption) was rebuilt in the 1580s by Sir Roger Bodenham who converted to Catholicism after a miraculous cure at St Winefride’s Well, Holywell, of a “gross tumour in the legs”. It was thereafter used as a Catholic place of worship. The Bodenhams suffered for their support of the King in the Civil War but had recovered by the 18th century when the tower of the chapel was rebuilt. The chapel has a splendid Elizabethan roof. In 1884, Countess Irena Maria Bodenham appointed Peter Paul Pugin to remodel the chapel with a beautifully carved wooden gilded altar in the apse. The Bodenhams departed in 1926 and the chapel is now in the care of English Heritage.
The earliest post-Emancipation Catholic church in Herefordshire is that of St Thomas of Cantilupe, Weobley, built in 1835 by the nearby recusant Monnington family. The building is of almost nonconformist character in stone; it has Gothic windows with brick arches. The interior is simple
and painted in pink. The splendid angels at the west end came from Belmont Abbey after the ghastly post-Vatican II reordering of that edifice.
There had been a Jesuit mission in Hereford since 1773. Following Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the decision was taken to open a new larger church. The London architect Charles Day was given the commission and work on St Francis Xavier commenced in 1837. The portico has two giant Doric columns, a massive frieze and pediment, all stuccoed in yellow. The interior is ornate with a broadly coved ceiling. The altar is framed by unfluted Ionic columns of light brown marble. The altar and tall round temple-like tabernacle are by JJ Scoles. The church was opened in 1850. (The reaction of AWN Pugin to this dreadfully un-Gothic church was predictable – “a pagan temple” and “a Catholic concert hall!”) In 1858, the Jesuits handed over the church and parish to the Benedictines of nearby Belmont Abbey. In 1954, the latter handed over them to the Archdiocese of Cardiff. In 1992 Archbishop John Aloysius Ward appallingly tried to close the church and sell the site. After the resulting furore the Belmont Benedictines resumed control and thankfully remain there to the present day.
The Abbey Church of St Michael and All Angels, Belmont was founded in 1852 by Francis Wegg-Prosser, educated at Eton and Balliol, Conservative MP for Herefordshire and Catholic convert. The foundation stone of the Benedictine Gothic abbey church was laid in 1854. EW Pugin was chosen as the architect. The nave and aisles were completed in 1856. Nine years later a lengthened sanctuary was provided. After EW Pugin’s death in 1875, further work was carried out by the successor practice of Pugin & Pugin under the direction of Peter Paul Pugin. Later work included the completion of the tower. The church includes many furnishings of high quality including carved stonework by Boulton of Cheltenham and stained glass by Hardman.
Belmont was established as the central novitiate for the English Benedictines from 1859 to 1917. At the same time it became the pro-cathedral of the Diocese of Newport and Menevia; both Bishop Joseph Brown (1850-1880) and Bishop John Hedley (1881-1915) were Benedictines and have splendid tombs in the abbey church. After the death of the latter, the cathedral of the see, raised to an archbishopric, was relocated to Cardiff. Belmont became an independent Benedictine community in 1916 and was raised to the rank of an abbey in 1920. A school was set up six years later and continued until 1996. The monastic community continues to flourish with some 40 monks, of whom some 18 live in the community with the rest running parishes in this country (in Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, Worcestershire and Cumbria) or at their monastery in Peru.
The abbey church was destructively reordered in 1966-7. The masonry screens by Cuthbert Pugin in the choir were removed, as were the abbot’s throne, the old high altar and an elaborate chapel in the north transept. The monks’s choir was relocated to the nave. Fortunately a second reordering in 1978-9 made good some of
the damage.
Robert Biddulph Phillips was another convert to Catholicism. He owned the manor of Old Longworth which possessed a derelict 14th-century chapel. In 1863 he founded the Convent of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge at Bartestree and had the chapel moved to stand adjacent to the convent, with it being restored by EW Pugin who designed the stone altar and reredos with statues of saints. A good window was installed by Hardman & Co. The convent eventually folded in the 1990s. Longworth Chapel is now owned by the Historic Chapels Trust while the chapel by Bucknall was converted into a house.
The staunchly Catholic Vaughans came to Courtfield in the parish of Welsh Bicknor (originally in Monmouthshire but now in Herefordshire) in the 17th century. In the next century they were Jacobites. John Francis Vaughan of Courtfield (1808-1878) married Eliza Rolls, and of their sons six became priests. The most notable of these was Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (Archbishop of Westminster 1892-1903 and builder of Westminster Cathedral), but one brother became Archbishop of Sydney and another Titular Bishop of Sebastopolis. Four of the daughters became nuns. In the next generation, Francis Vaughan was Bishop of Menevia (1926-35).
The Chapel of Our Lady was built behind the house in 1881. The nave and chancel were built of sandstone in Early Decorated style with a bellcote above the chancel arch. It has a simple interior with a large gabled stone reredos. There is much stained glass by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake and Heaton, Butler & Bayne. The chapel sadly is disused.
Courtfield and its early-19th-century house was sold to the Mill Hill Fathers in 1950 but repurchased by the Vaughan family in 2010. The purchaser Patrick Vaughan also purchased from the Church of England in 2011 the isolated church of St Margaret, Welsh Bicknor, in its magical setting by the RiverWye. The church was rebuilt in 1858 by TH Rushforth. Only two services have been held in the church since the purchase, both Catholic rites.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.