Surrey is a small and hilly county within easy reach of London. In the mid-18th century, the writer Arthur Young condemned its communications as the worst in the country. It has only become populous since around 1800. Before that it was the poorest and the most sparsely populated of the home counties, with small settlements in the river valleys. It lost large parts of its territory to London in 1880 and 1955.
Its major medieval religious foundation was the Benedictine abbey of St Peter at Chertsey, founded in 666 AD by St Erkenwald, who became Bishop of London in 675 AD. There were also Cistercians at Waverley Abbey and Augustinians at Newark Priory. Little remains of Chertsey but there are more substantial ruins at Waverley and Newark.
The main recusant family was the Westons of Sutton Place, near Guildford. Sir Richard Weston built the great Elizabethan house in the early 1520s. His brother, Sir William Weston, was the last pre-Reformation Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitaller. Sir Richard’s grandson, Sir Henry Weston, ostensibly conformed to the established church under Elizabeth, but by the 17th century the family had reverted to Catholicism. His grandson, Sir Richard Weston (1591-1652), was a royalist and a Catholic and his estates were sequestrated during the Civil War. The last of the Westons was Melior Mary Weston who died in 1782. She bequeathed the estate to a distant cousin, John Webbe, provided he hyphenated his name to Webbe-Watson. He was granted the Cross of Devotion of the Order of Malta in 1840 in recognition of his link with Sir William Weston. On the death of his son in 1857, the estate passed to Francis Henry Salvin of Croxdale Hall, County Durham.
Originally part of the pre-Reformation Diocese of Winchester, Surrey was part of the Diocese/Archdiocese of Southwark from the restoration of the Hierarchy until the creation of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in 1965. Its current bishop is the Rt Rev Richard Moth, installed in 2015.
The Church of St Edward the Confessor, Sutton Park was built in 1875 by Charles Alban Buckler, the convert architect of St Dominic and Our Lady of the Rosary, Haverstock Hill, who also did much work at Arundel Castle. He became Surrey Herald Extraordinary and a Knight of Malta. The church was built in Early English style with five lancet windows each side and a bell turret at the west end. It stands in a fine parkland setting. There is good stained glass by both Hardman and Mayer. The church has survived the worst horrors of the “spirit of Vatican II” with the altar still eastern-facing and the wooden altar rails intact. Buckler is buried in the churchyard.
One sad loss to the Catholic Church has been that of St Charles Borromeo, Weybridge. Built originally in 1836, it became the church of King Louis-Philippe after the 1848 Revolution, when he lived in exile at Claremont. Between 1850 and 1869, 11 members of the Orleans family were buried in the church but their bodies were moved to the family mausoleum in Dreux in 1871. The only exception was the beautiful Duchesse de Nemours whose body was left in Weybridge at the request of her husband. In 1883, a chapel was erected to contain the body, and an effigy carved by the French sculptor Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu. In 1976, the church was regrettably sold to the Korean Presbyterian Church. The remains of the duchess were then transferred to Dreux. In 1994, her tomb was sold by Sotheby’s to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.
Caterham is best known for the Guards’ Depot. The Church of the Sacred Heart was built in 1881 in part to cater for the religious requirements of Catholic guardsmen. The architect was Edward Ingress Bell. He was known mainly as a secular architect, although he did design the now-demolished Catholic Church of St Joseph, Guildford. The church is built of dressed stone. The exterior, with its narthex and flèche, is competent but not particularly exciting. The real thrill is the interior painting of angels, particularly in the Lady Chapel, recently well restored under the supervision of the parish priest Father Sean Finnegan, sometime of the London Oratory.
The Franciscans of the Order of the Friars Minor commissioned Frederick Arthur Walters to build a friary at Chilworth in 1892. The friary stands in an open clearing fringed with woods. The cruciform church is built in late Gothic style and has a somewhat austere external appearance. The walls are built in Ewhurst stone. There is a narrow saddleback tower over the crossing. The austere outside belies the rich interior of the church. The most striking feature is the great organ gallery with its painted and gilded rood framed by the arch of the crossing dividing nave and sanctuary. Our Lady stands on one side of the Crucified Christ and St John the Evangelist on the other. Many of the features of the church, including the marble and alabaster high altar and the canopied reredos, are remarkably unchanged. There are two side chapels to either side of the chancel arch with crocketed canopies above. The Franciscans departed in 2009. Two years later the Benedictines from St Augustine’s Abbey in Ramsgate purchased the site, and renamed the Friary; about a dozen monks remain.
FA Walters built two other Catholic churches in Surrey. The first is the uncompleted St Joseph, Dorking in 1894-5, which has a painted reredos in the sanctuary. More satisfactory is St Edmund King and Martyr, Godalming of 1905-6. The carved stone reredos in the sanctuary, with its figures of saints, dates from 1923 and the elaborate Lady Chapel, with its delicate screen, painted and gilded reredos, stencilled decoration and stained glass, is seven years later. Most of the stained glass is by Hardman & Co.
Joseph Goldie (1882-1953) built a couple of Catholic churches. Our Lady and St Peter, Leatherhead (1923-4) is a fine stone Perpendicular building. It has interesting furnishings, including Arts and Crafts stained glass by Paul Woodroffe, and Stations of the Cross by Eric Gill. The Assumption of Our Lady, Englefield Green (1930-31) is a basilica with campanile, painted white on the outside. It has recently been restored.
Other notable Catholic churches are All Saints, Oxted (James Leonard Williams, 1913-19), St Anne, Chertsey (Scoles & Raymond, 1929-30) and St Teresa of Avila, Chiddingfold (Henry Bingham Towler, 1959).
The convert Etonian architect HS Goodhart-Rendel built the brown-brick cruciform Sacred Heart, Cobham in Georgian vernacular in 1959-60. The interior is white with Tuscan Doric columns. The most striking feature is the marble and opus sectile reredos against the east wall depicting Christ Triumphant on the Cross.
Goodhart-Rendel’s pupil Francis George Broadbent built Holy Name, Esher in 1960-1. He employed a conservative style. The church is North-Italian Romanesque with an arcaded west front and campanile. The interior has good proportions although the sanctuary has been reordered with a western-facing altar. It has a fine east window by Harry Clarke Studios of Dublin.
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