Our forgotten heritage

Perhaps because the vast majority of Catholic buildings in Britain are less than 200 years old, they have often been dismissed as pattern-book boring. But, as a new study reveals, there are some remarkable gems now at risk through prejudice or indifference

When I told a Catholic friend that I was writing a book about some of the best Catholic churches her immediate reaction was: "Are there any good ones?" Catholic churches are a part of the built "heritage" that was, until quite recently, generally dismissed. Catholic churches have received nothing like the attention that they should have. And because of that general indifference, and even prejudice, some very important churches face a very uncertain future.

Conscious of what could become a crisis, the Patrimony Committee of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales got together with English Heritage to confront the problem. One response was to commission a book. It was to be for the general public and it would celebrate the best Catholic architecture in England and Wales - churches, cathedrals, chapels and monasteries. It would also warn the readers about what was in jeopardy.

The churches were selected by the Patrimony Committee and English Heritage together. Alex Ramsay, an eminent photographer of architecture and landscape, was commissioned by the Bishops' Conference to take the pictures. I (high Church of England) got the job of writing the book.

So I set off on a voyage of discovery. Nearly all the priests I visited were generous with their time. A few who showed me round their churches asked if I was a Catholic. I would point reassuringly to my wife who accompanied me throughout, and is. But not one of them gave any indication that they thought I was disqualified from the task by my Anglicanism. The Catholic Church I encountered on my travels was entirely free of any sense of exclusivity.

We met many priests whose knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, their churches was impressive. There were others who saw their buildings as purely functional; their concerns were more with the problems of the parish rather than with aesthetics. Only a very few viewed with suspicion anything - possibly this book - that might impede their ability to do whatever they liked within their own church.

From my own point of view I had to learn the terminology - slightly but importantly different from Anglican churches. But perhaps the outsider's view I brought to the subject helped. I have been looking at buildings for years as a television producer making films about architecture. I discovered that writing about such places was very different. It is easy enough to point a camera at, say, a font or reredos. It will look magnificent or not. But describing perhaps the seventieth reredos in the book was a challenge. I did not want to compile an inventory on the lines of "... font by S. Beaumont of Leeds (1878), reredos by M.R.A. Harris of Shrewsbury (1893)". ("Are you sure it is 1893?" English Heritage would sometimes unsettlingly ask.) I also wanted to look beyond the art and architecture. All these buildings were physical expressions of that extraordinary expansion of faith that swept through Britain after Catholic emancipation and tell us about the people who founded them, preached in them and worshipped in them.

One autumn evening my wife and I drove westward from Manchester to go and look at All Saints Friary, Barton-upon-Irwell - a church for which much had been claimed. It is Grade-I listed. We travelled through a flat world of trading and industrial estates. We passed the gleaming, glamorous modernity of Manchester United's ground at Old Trafford and the vast Trafford Park Shopping Centre. Just beyond, isolated and melancholy, was All Saints Friary. It is one of the most lavish and important churches designed by Edward Pugin (1834-75), son of the great A.W.N. Pugin. Edward had a generous budget and there is polychromatic brickwork, a fabulously tiled floor, a superb altar and reredos (E.E. Geflowski of Liverpool ... probably). In a painting on the sanctuary wall, the architect stands proudly before his maker and beside his patron, local grandee Sir Humphrey de Trafford.

A few years ago the church was almost derelict. There was a drive led by English Heritage, a surviving de Trafford and the parish to restore and rebuild the church - a hugely expensive project that involved a totally new roof and a rebuilt bell cote. All Saints Friary was saved. Now it is in danger again. The dry rot returned. At the time of writing, the chancel and the chantry chapel are screened off as dangerous.

One thing I learned was that the great Catholic architectural heritage is not, of course, all Victorian. The book took us to eighteenth-century churches and chapels erected when intolerance of Catholic worship weakened. What is surprising is how magnificent under the circumstances the Classical chapels then built by grand Catholic families like the Welds at Lulworth and the Arundells at Wardour were: glorious expressions of freedom after two centuries of concealment.

Classical chapels were built at Bakewell in Derbyshire, Rainhill in Lancashire and Everingham in Yorkshire by rich, not necessarily aristocratic, patrons for local congregations. All these churches survive but the magnificent St Everilda, Everingham, has recently closed. It needs money spent on it and has only a small congregation.

On the other hand, the first chapels to be built in towns for less distinguished congregations were modest. The first new churches looked like Nonconformist meeting houses and were usually small and self-effacing. That was a wise precaution. Churches such as Warwick Street in Soho were attacked by rampaging mobs. On the other hand the spectacular Greek-revival St Francis Xavier was positioned boldly in the middle of Hereford's main street - almost next door to the Anglican cathedral. The church faced dereliction and closure a year or so ago (the site was thought to be just the place for a supermarket). The parishioners  would have none of it and they - with help from English Heritage - fought for its restoration and won.

It was Gothic, rather than Classical, that was to become the dominant style of the nineteenth century. For its devotees Christian architecture was Gothic architecture. It became a matter of faith. We went to the great northern cities of England to see great Gothic, "landmark" churches. They were built for swelling congregations whose numbers were multiplied by Irish Catholic immigrants. But they were also a statement, showing that Catholicism was back at the heart of British life.

One fine example is the Church of the Holy Name in Manchester, paid for by two sisters from Worcester. Another is St Walburge's, Preston, and both were designed in the Gothic style by J.A. Hansom. There was no rich patron in Preston. St Walburge's was paid for by its desperately poor congregation. It is epic, even Wagnerian, in scale. Hansom could always do a big thing in a big way and here designed a massive hammer-beam roof tipped by angels and a spire only slightly less tall than that of Salisbury Cathedral. The sombre grandeur of the interior did indeed offer the impoverished worshippers a "glimpse of heaven". The priest who showed us round lives alone with his dog in a presbytery designed for eight priests and ministers to a congregation that has, with shifting populations and house clearances, shrunk to a fraction of the multitude that originally worshipped here. Only the front of the nave is used now. St Walburge's needs money if it is to cope with its magnificent but ageing acres of fabric.

In strong contrast, a local aristocrat sought to build a Catholic church in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. His bishop remarked discouragingly that there were no Catholics in Marlow. None the less he persevered and St Peter's (designed by a Gothic devotee Pugin the elder) was, by the 1960s, far too small for its now bulging congregation. A modern extension was added which is larger than the original church.

By the end of the nineteenth century the possibilities offered by Gothic seemed to have been exhausted. The most important Catholic commission of the century was given to John Francis Bentley. His new cathedral at Westminster would be Byzantine in style, inspired by Hagia Sofia in Istanbul.

Much later, in the twentieth century, the commissioners of Catholic churches embraced architecture's Modern Movement. These buildings were unlike anything seen before. They accommodated the new liturgy and the new emphasis on a central altar. Many developed serious structural problems as well as inspiring aesthetic debate. Churches such as those at Leyland in Lancashire and Woodthorpe, near Nottingham; new cathedrals such as Liverpool and Clifton, in Bristol; new monasteries such as Worth, West Sussex, were built in variations of the Modernist style which became as much a matter of faith to its adherents as Gothic had been to its followers. There was at the same time a rigorous re-ordering of existing churches, much regretted by some of the laity and clergy I talked to. They felt that traditional ways of expressing spiritual aspirations through architecture, furnishings and decoration had been recklessly abandoned. It is ironic that the last important Catholic building to be erected in England - Brentwood Cathedral in Essex - was designed in a meticulous classical style by Quinlan Terry, its leading adherent today.

The morale and dedication of the clergy I visited was often movingly impressive but their numbers and their congregations are in decline. So are their budgets. What is to be done with the churches that they have in their care? Many superb Victorian churches are coming up for their first major overhaul. Fine buildings have developed leaking roofs, dry rot and damp. The quinquennial report on Westminster Cathedral written two years ago identified £3 million of works that it regarded as urgent. The cathedral has no endowments.

The Catholic Historic Churches Committees, English Heritage and the Welsh heritage body Cadw, as well as the priests and parishioners of many churches, confront variations of the same problem. It should not be a matter of concern just to Catholics and committees.