SACRED HEART, WIMBLEDON

Reproduced from The Catholic Herald (September 2008)

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The debt owed by the Catholic Church in England to nineteenth- and twentieth-century converts is incalculable. Without them there would be a very different Catholic Church from the one we know today. Victorian converts mainly constituted a group of potential leaders of upper- and upper-middle-class backgrounds, men born in this country, educated in public schools and at Oxford and Cambridge , and women from the same background. Men provided priests, bishops, even a cardinal or two, and religious. Women became foundresses of religious orders, nuns, benefactresses, writers and many distinguished converts of both sexes contributed greatly to the lay intelligentsia.

Few parishes embody the fruits of convert endeavour more fully than the Sacred Heart, Wimbledon . The church was built in 1887 by Edith Arendrop, a member of the Courtauld silk-weaving family, who was instructed by Fr John Morris SJ, the Harrovian novice master of the Jesuit novitiate at Roehampton. Received in 1846, he had previously been Vice-Rector of the English College , Rome , a Canon of Westminster and secretary to Cardinal Wiseman. Fr Morris remained her spiritual director and the parish was placed in the hands of the Jesuits. Mme Arendrop was assisted in her endeavour by Mrs William Currie, the youngest daughter of Sir William Young, baronet, who was received in 1858, to be followed in 1896 by her husband, William Currie, a banker, grandson of Lord Wodehouse and brother of Lord Currie, a privy councillor and at one time British Ambassador at Rome .

A third was Emily Fullerton, a niece of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, the novelist and philanthropist, daughter of Lord Granville and granddaughter of the fifth Duke of Devonshire, who became a Catholic in 1884, following her aunt who was received in 1846. The first parish priest was Fr William Kerr SJ, grandson of the sixth Marquess of Lothian and formerly of the Madras Civil Service, who was received in 1852. The architect was Frederick Walters a pupil of George Goldie, and himself a convert who went on to become one of the best Catholic architects of his generation, responsible for designing over forty of the many Catholic churches and seminaries established in England during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This social, if high minded, galaxy of birth, influence, talent and wealth embodies the consequences of nineteenth-century conversion at large.

Perhaps this may seem an unnecessarily snobbish introduction to one of the most beautiful churches and remarkable parishes in Southern England but without these people’s generosity and influence it is unlikely that the parish would have come into being. At first the foundation of the Sacred Heart was seen as a quixotic venture and the site of the church was achieved by stealth. Wimbledon was then a Low Church village in Surrey quickly becoming a prosperous London suburb with relatively few Catholics. Changes came in 1892 with the foundation by the Jesuits of Wimbledon College for boys, followed by the Ursuline School for girls in the same year. Catholics who wanted a good education for their children moved to Wimbledon in significant numbers and today the parish – one of the biggest in the country - has one of the largest populations of young Catholic families in London .

The late Gothic Revival represented a flowering of church architecture in which beauty played a significant part. Walters designed a church on a small cathedral scale in the Decorated Gothic style, the most developed style of English Gothic architecture. It took many years to build and was not finished, entirely free of debt, until 1901. Built of Beer and Ancaster stone and brick, covered with silver-grey knapped flints on the outside walls, the interior is a combination of scale, restraint, sculpture and delicate detail. Above the pillars of the nave are eight statues of Jesuit saints and, below, angels carry instruments of the Passion. The vault and floor are of wood, there are three chapels in a chevet behind the sanctuary, chapels in the nave by Romaine-Walker and Drysdale, gilded stations of the cross and altar rails by Bentley, and, at the west end, a stone-vaulted baptistery with a soaring, pinnacled font cover. Most of the stained glass is by Hardman and Westlake , and Westlake also painted Bentley’s stations.

But the most striking feature of the interior is the great rood-cross. It was designed and executed by Joseph McCulloch, of Kennington, under Walters’s direction and is modelled on the fifteenth-century rood of the collegiate church of St Peter , Louvain . Decorated in lemon-gold and restrained colour it takes the form of a florient cross standing on a beam, flanked by figures of St Mary and St John and two seraphim, based on drawings of the rood-screen of Westminster Abbey, taken from the Islip roll. McCulloch was the leading woodcarver of the late Gothic Revival and worked for the most prominent church architects of the day. Commanding the entire church, the Sacred Heart’s rood is one of the finest in the country and brings you to your knees.

The Sacred Heart is one of the best-attended Catholic churches in the country with a week-end Mass attendance of nearly 2000. Three Masses are said daily. The benches are worn by decades of prayer and use. The worship is varied, ranging from Low Masses, family Masses full of children, a Solemn Latin Mass on Sunday, a folk Mass in the evening, a quiet Low Mass to end the day and regular Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Few churches these days can be said to be bursting with life but go to the Sacred Heart for the Family Mass, the Easter Vigil or the Midnight Mass and you will see what that means.

All of this suggests not only life but commitment. In 2006 a major appeal was launched to provide a meeting space for young people and essential disabled access to the parish halls and presbytery. Happily this first target has been met but it leaves the parish still facing the huge further burden of urgent repairs and especially the renovation of the church floor. Structurally, the Sacred Heart remains as solid as the day it was finished. Over the last 100 years, due to problems arising from the installation of various heating systems, the floor which is separate from the main structure has sunk noticeably towards the centre. Some £500,000 is needed to provide a replacement, a fully rebuilt floor finished with new oak blocks and including fully integrated under-floor heating. Prosaic though this sounds, the new church floor is essential for the future of the building and will extend the life of the Sacred Heart indefinitely.

The scale of generosity shown by the church’s founders is a phenomenon of the past. The fruits of their sacrifice have burgeoned on a scale which none could have imagined. The Sacred Heart, Wimbledon , has a dispersed family all over the world that owes its faith to the seeds sown over the last ten decades, not least in a multitude of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life, a pattern that continues. If you belong to the family, or have been influenced by its life, please help to make sure that the work continues and one of the most beautiful churches and varied parishes in the country are prepared for the future.

Contributions to the Sacred Heart Appeal will be welcomed by the Revd Gerard Mitchell SJ, Sacred Heart Presbytery, Edge Hill, London , SW19 4LU .

ANTHONY SYMONDSON SJ