Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart and adjoining Presbytery, St Ives, Cambridgeshire

Summary

A Roman Catholic parish church, erected in 1843 as the Church of St Andrew in Cambridge to a design by AWN Pugin, re-erected in St Ives in 1902 as the Church of the Sacred Heart by John Morley of Cambridge and Edward W Robb of St Ives.

The presbytery of 1906, the large extension built on the south side in 1978 (originally used to enlarge the congregation space and serve as a parish hall), the parish hall of 2001-2002 and the La Salette Room of 2017 are not included in the listing.

Description

The adjoining presbytery of 1906, the large extension built on the liturgical south side in 1978 (originally used to enlarge the congregation space and serve as a parish hall), the parish hall of 2001-2002 and the La Salette Room of 2017 are not included in the listing.

MATERIALS: it is constructed from red brick laid in English bond with a limestone plinth and dressings, brick stacks and slate roofs.

PLAN: the church is orientated north-west to south-east but the following description assumes conventional liturgical orientation i.e. as though the altar is located at the 'east' end. It comprises a clerestoried nave, four-bay lean-to aisles, a western bellcote and a northern porch and sacristy.

EXTERIOR: of a C13 Early English Gothic Revival style, the church’s gabled west end fronts Needingworth Road and has two lancet windows within chamfered quoined surrounds set one above the other within a central projecting section. It is surmounted by a gabled stone bellcote with two pointed openings with foliate-stopped hoodmoulds. The west end is divided from the flanking aisles by offset buttresses, with each aisle having a single lancet window within chamfered quoined surrounds.

The north and south sides of the church have four-bay lean-to aisles above which are four pairs of pointed clerestory windows within recessed stone surrounds with pointed segmental arches and gauged brick heads.

On the north side, a porch with a stone-coped kneelered gable projects from the westernmost bay. It has a pointed doorway with a double-chamfered quoined surround and a foliate-stopped hoodmould. The wooden door, which probably comes from the Cambridge church, has two decorative strap hinges with flowing scrollwork. The side returns have small lancets with trefoil heads and chamfered quoined surrounds.

To the left of the porch, the two centre bays have single lancets with chamfered quoined surrounds.

To the left again, projecting from the easternmost bay, is a two-storey sacristy with a pitched roof at right-angles to the nave roof, set behind a triangular gable with corbelled kneelers. Its north and west sides both have two-light pointed windows on each floor, of which those on the first floor are deeper, while those on the north side are flanked to the left by small lancets. All the windows in this range have chamfered quoined surrounds, with those on the north side and west side of the ground floor having brick relieving arches. The sacristy’s east side has a pointed doorway and a substantial brick stack rising to a deep, oversailing, upper section.

The gabled east end of the church has stepped triple lancets to the nave, with a small trefoil directly above the centre light, while the flanking aisles, again separated from the nave by offset buttresses, have single lancets, all within chamfered quoined surrounds.

On the south side, projecting from the easternmost bay, is a gabled range added in 1978 (not of special interest), while the remainder of the south aisle is concealed by the La Salette room (not of special interest), a former internal courtyard between the church, presbytery and 1978 addition, which was roofed over in 2017 to create a multi-purpose space. Adjoining the La Salette Room to the south is a presbytery built in 1906, while a church hall of 2001-2002 adjoins the east side (both not of special interest).

INTERIOR: the interior of the main body of the church has plain plastered walls with a four-bay nave arcade of double-chamfered pointed arches carried on circular and octagonal piers with octagonal capitals and semi-octagonal responds with semi-octagonal capitals. The nave roof has principal rafters carried down onto timber wall posts along with collars with raking struts and wrought-iron ties and the aisles have common rafter roofs. The sanctuary is raised by one step and carpeted, with the floor elsewhere being parquet. To the left of the altar, set in the sanctuary, is a foundation stone with the inscription 'A XP O / ANNO SALUTIS / MCMII / AD FIDEM REDEANT ANGLI' (Christ the Alpha and Omega / The year of Salvation / 1902 / May the English return to the faith’). The 1978 addition on the south side (not of special interest) is separated from the main body of the church by a pair of sliding and folding doors.

FIXTURES AND FITTINGS: furnishings designed by AWN Pugin include the high altar of limewashed Caen stone with symbols of the evangelists in three quatrefoils; the centre quatrefoil shows the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) carrying a banner of Victory, and is surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists, clockwise from the top: the winged man (St Matthew), the eagle (St John), the winged ox (St Luke), and the winged lion (St Mark); the quatrefoils on the left and right bear figures of winged angels. The tabernacle behind the altar is believed to have been manufactured by John Hardman Jr of Hardman and Company to Pugin's design. Also by Pugin is the octagonal Caen stone font, C13 in style, with a carved quatrefoil, wooden cover and a base of four short columns; it was originally inside the north door but moved to the east end of the north aisle in 1978. The Lady altar at the east end of the south aisle is of carved oak and bears the inscription MATER PURISSIMA / ORA PRO NOBIS (Mother, the most pure / pray for us); its exact date is unknown but probably post-dates the 1902 rebuilding.

STAINED GLASS: the stained-glass lancet windows above the high altar are those originally from the Church of St Andrew, Cambridge, designed by Pugin and made by William Wailes of Newcastle. The centre window features Our Lady with the Child Jesus; to its left is St Andrew carrying the saltire cross of his martyrdom, and above and below him are the symbols of St Matthew and St Mark respectively; to the right is St Felix, patron of the Diocese of East Anglia, with the symbols of the other two evangelists, St John and St Luke, above and below. Above is a small trefoil window showing a descending dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. At the west end of the two side aisles are windows to St Alphonsus on the west wall and St George on the east.

A memorial window above the Lady Altar was donated in memory of Mary Agnes Norman, a parishioner, while a window above the Baptismal Font depicts the symbols of Baptism, both installed in 1979.

Two stained-glass windows installed in 2002 include the Centenary Window which was placed in the south aisle and depicts the removal of the church from Cambridge to St Ives, while the second was placed in the north aisle and depicts St Felix, St Etheldreda and St Edmund, three saints with important East Anglian connections.

History

The origins of the Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart in St Ives dates back to 1842-1843 when it was erected as the Church of St Andrew in Cambridge. It was designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852), an architect, designer and writer whose work became the theoretical and practical inspiration for the Gothic Revival movement and, following his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1835, a leading architect for new Roman Catholic churches. During the 1830s Pugin often visited Cambridge with John Talbot, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury (1791-1852), and Ambrose Phillips de Lisle (1809-1878), two rich Catholic benefactors, with the sole aim of advancing the Catholic cause in one of the most Protestant cities in England. Simultaneously, the Society of Jesus (also known as Jesuits) were concerned by the city’s lack of a Catholic presence given the large number of seasonal Irish labourers employed on local farms and then later on the construction of the local railways. Accordingly, to serve the growing Catholic population, the Church of St Andrew was built on Union Road. It was a small, white-brick building for which Pugin used the C13 Church of St Michael at nearby Longstanton as his inspiration. The church was used for 47 years until it was declared redundant in 1890 after it was replaced, to meet the growing congregation, by the much larger Our Lady and The English Martyrs which was built on an adjacent site at the corner of Lensfield Road and Hills Road.

At the same time the Catholic congregation was expanding in Cambridge, the Irish and Lancastrian drovers attending the cattle markets in the nearby town of St Ives started to request a place to meet for Mass. In 1899, George Pauling, a railway engineer and Catholic convert, purchased a small wooden building at 2 East Street to serve as a chapel. In March 1902, with the town's congregation having become much larger and more established, Pauling again came forward as a benefactor and donated £1000 to purchase the redundant Church of St Andrew as a new place of worship. Much of the building material was transported by barge, via the River Cam and Great Ouse, to St Ives, where it was re-erected on Needingworth Road. The contract for removal was carried out by Messrs Thackray and Co Ltd of Huntingdon and cost £765, the new building materials required cost £111 and the architects for the rebuilding, John Morley of Cambridge and Edward W Robb of St Ives, were paid £60. The foundation stone was laid on 16 March 1902 at a ceremony performed by Fr John Peter Arendzen, the church’s first parish priest, and the rebuilt church, rededicated to the Sacred Heart, was opened by Bishop Riddell of Northampton on 9 July 1902.

The Church of the Sacred Heart, however, was not an exact copy of Pugin's Cambridge church. Its original white brick walling was replaced with red brick, some of the stone window surrounds were replaced, a clerestory was added and the porch was removed from the liturgical south side and placed on the north side. The upper floor of the two-storey sacristy was initially used to accommodate the parish priest until a permanent presbytery was built alongside the church in 1906. Internally, the stone arcades are Pugin’s work, along with many of the original furnishings, including the stained-glass windows, although the arrangement was changed. The rood screen, however, was not transferred to St Ives, and two original stained-glass windows and other original furnishings were destroyed by an act of vandalism in 1906.

In 1960, a timber baldacchino was added over the altar and new communion rails were installed, although both items were removed in 1978 when Pugin's Caen-stone altar was brought forward and new Iroko pews were introduced to accommodate the liturgical changes advised by the Second Vatican Council. At the same time a large extension (not of special interest) was built between the church and the presbytery to enlarge the congregational space and to serve as a separate parish hall. The architect for these changes was Julian Limentani of Marshall Sisson Architects, who later designed a new parish hall (not of special interest) to the east of the 1978 addition, which opened in January 2002. In the same year, Pugin’s altar, originally lime-washed when installed in the Cambridge church, but subsequently subjected to multiple coats of paint, was restored to its original appearance. In 2017, a roof was placed over the small internal courtyard between the church, presbytery and 1978 addition to provide a multi-purpose space known as the La Salette room (not of special interest).

Reasons for Listing

The Roman Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, built in 1843 as the Church of St Andrew in Cambridge to a design by AWN Pugin, re-erected in St Ives in 1902 by John Morley of Cambridge and Edward W Robb of St Ives, with later alterations and additions, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest

* it replicates the plan of, and incorporates fabric and furnishings from, AWN Pugin’s Church of St Andrew, Cambridge;
* the use of round and octagonal piers illustrates Pugin's endeavour towards a correct vocabulary in church architecture;
* it retains a range of high-quality internal fixtures and fittings designed by Pugin and undertaken by noted craftsmen of their day, including the Caen stone altar and the stained glass windows above the altar.

Historic interest:

* its relocation from Cambridge represents a local response to introduce liturgical worship to serve the rapidly expanding Catholic congregation of St Ives.

External Links

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