Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony, Crawley
Encyclopedia
The Friary Church of St Francis and St Anthony is a Roman Catholic church in Crawley
, a town and borough
in West Sussex
, England
. The town's first permanent place of Roman Catholic worship was founded in 1861 next to a friary
whose members, from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
, had been invited to the area by a wealthy local family of Catholic converts. Crawley's transformation from a modest market town
to a rapidly growing postwar New Town
in the mid-20th century made a larger church necessary, and in the late 1950s the ecclesiastical architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
was commissioned to build a new church. The friary closed in 1980 and has been demolished, but the large brick church still stands in a commanding position facing the town centre. English Heritage
has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
was founded a century later. The town lay partly in the parish of Ifield, a neighbouring village: the parish boundary ran up the middle of the wide High Street.
After the English Reformation
, Anglicanism
predominated in the area, Protestant
Nonconformity
also became well established, and Roman Catholicism was almost unknown. A survey in 1582 found that two inhabitants of Ifield parish were recusants
. By the mid-19th century, the centuries-old hostility towards Roman Catholicism held by many Anglicans in Sussex had faded, and conversions
from the established Church to Catholicism were becoming more common. Prominent local examples of this included several members of the Blunt family, the wealthy owners of the Crabbet Park estate just outside Crawley.
The Blunts (some members took the spelling Blount) and the Gales had been important members of local society for many generations. Leonard Gale senior moved to the area in the 1640s and became an ironmaster
; he built up a large business and owned much land and property, all of which was inherited by his son Leonard junior. He bought the Crabbet Park estate in 1698 with £9,000 (£ as of ) of his inheritance. He became richer and more influential through the 18th century, despite the decline of the local iron industry, and on his death in 1750 Crabbet Park passed to his youngest daughter Sarah, who by then had married into the Blunt family. Upon her death in 1758 Crabbet Park passed to her widower Samuel Blunt, who later married Winifred Scawen. Their granddaughter, Mary Scawen Blunt, was a friend of the Roman Catholic convert Cardinal
John Henry Newman, and converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism herself. Her sons, Francis and Wilfrid, also converted in 1852.
In 1859, at the invitation of a Mrs. Montgomery (a relative of Mary Scawen Blunt), Italian Capuchin friars
arrived in Crawley. They stayed at her house on the Horsham Road (in the present-day Gossops Green neighbourhood) and celebrated Mass in its coach-house
, which was reordered to make a chapel and dedicated to St Philip
. Soon afterwards, Mary Scawen Blunt died; she asked her sons to found a permanent Roman Catholic church to serve Crawley and the surrounding area and a friary for the Capuchins. In 1860, Francis bought 3 acres (1.2 ha) of land near Crawley railway station
and the town centre and arranged the design and construction of a friary and adjoining church; the builder was recorded as a Mr Ockendon. The friary formed three sides of a square around a courtyard; the north side was formed by the church, which was dedicated to St Francis
. All buildings were in the Early English Gothic style and were built of stone and brick, and the church itself had a bellcote
on the roof. The church and friary were dedicated and opened on 12 October 1861.
The church was one of the earliest Roman Catholic places of worship in Sussex
, and it served a large area in its early years—as far as the villages of Rudgwick
and Nuthurst
to the west, Copthorne
in the northeast and Lindfield
in the southeast. The town of Horsham
was also covered. The friars became an important and well-respected part of the Crawley community: they undertook missionary work locally and in other countries, and were often seen around the town in their simple brown robes. Anselm Kenealy, a former friar, became the first Archbishop
of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Simla
—the predecessor of the present Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Delhi in India.
On 23 November 1895, the Guild of St Anthony of Padua was founded at the church, which became its world headquarters on the instruction of Pope Pius X
. The Guardian of the friary established the guild on the 700th anniversary of Anthony of Padua
's birth after a portrait in the church was identified as a 15th-century depiction of the saint. It had formed part of Mrs Montgomery's bequest to the church and friary, which included an ornate altar of marble
and alabaster
and an accompanying altarpiece
, both of which came from a chapel in her Italian villa. These, and the portrait, were placed in a side chapel in the church, which became a shrine to St Anthony. On 26 July 1946, at the request of the friars, Pope Pius XII
formally rededicated the church to St Francis and St Anthony.
Crawley was designated as a New Town
on 9 January 1947 by Lewis Silkin
, the Minister of Town and Country Planning in Clement Attlee
's postwar Labour Government. The plans included increasing the population of about 9,500 to 50,000 by 1963 by building a series of residential neighbourhoods around an expanded town centre. By 1960, this target population had been exceeded, and plans were underway for further expansion. The friary church was not large enough to cater for the increased number of worshippers, and some structural problems were discovered. Local ecclesiastical architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
was commissioned to design a new church. On 14 June 1958, the 119th anniversary of Francis Scawen Blunt's birthday, the foundation stone was placed, and two days later demolition of the old church began. The new church was arranged at a right-angle to its predecessor, which allowed old tombs to be incorporated into the building's foundations instead of being destroyed. The sanctuary was built on the site of the old nave
. Local construction firm James Longley and Company built the church.
The new building was consecrated and opened on 18 November 1959, the 100th anniversary of the Capuchin friars' arrival in Crawley. The friars left the town in 1980 and moved to Canterbury
, after which the church was no longer the headquarters of the Guild of St Anthony. The friary buildings behind Goodhart-Rendel's church were demolished, but the large adjacent burial ground remains. A 19th-century burial vault
for members of the Blunt/Blount family stands alongside the graves of Catherine "Skittles" Walters
—Wilfrid Blunt's mistress and the subject of some of his poems—and Lord Alfred Douglas
, Oscar Wilde
's lover "Bosie", who was buried here in 1945 alongside his mother. Francis Blunt's tomb stands inside a private chapel (the Blunt Chapel) behind the altar, next to that of his sister Alice; both died in 1872. Wilfrid Blunt carved a stone effigy
of his brother in friar's robes, which rests on top of the tomb.
An internal reorganisation and rebuilding was carried out in 1988, which opened up the interior and changed the small sanctuary. Another refurbishment took place between October 2008 and March 2009, during which time the church was closed. Architect Deirdre Waddington's work, which cost £750,000, won a Royal Institute of British Architects
prize. As well as structural work and improved disabled access, a mural of Pope Benedict XVI
's coat of arms
was added.
and Nikolaus Pevsner
described it as "a composition of oddly assembled parts". The cruciform
structure is a large but low-set building of dark greyish brick with some intricately detailed red-brick courses
. The roof is laid with pantiles. The main entrance, a round-arched doorway in a slightly recessed bay
, sits below five tall, narrow windows with elaborate tracery
; the brickwork surrounding these is diapered.
Inside, the ceiling of the long nave is of concrete
, painted and laid out in a hexagonal pattern. The nave is flanked by aisles with plain arches, above which runs a tunnel vault
. A small, slightly offset tower sits on top of the crossing
, which originally had an arch leading through to the nave. This was removed as part of the reordering work in 1988, and a hidden steel structure had to be inserted instead to support it. The shrine to St Anthony of Padua was moved from the old church and is in the south aisle. There is an array of wooden fixtures throughout the church, including screens, galleries and pew
s, but Goodhart-Rendel's altar and altar rails were lost when the reordering of the sanctuary took place. Part of the painted ceiling was also destroyed by this work. A new altar was obtained from a church in Woking
, Surrey
, which no longer required it.
on 25 October 2007; this defines it as a "nationally important" building of "special interest". As of February 2001, it was one of 85 Grade II structures, and 100 listed buildings and structures of all grades, in the Borough of Crawley. English Heritage regards it as architecturally important as it is one of the best works by Goodhart-Rendel, an "eminent" ecclesiastical architect, and historically significant both as an "important component of the dramatic expansion of the town in the mid-20th century" and as a piece of postwar planning.
The five other Roman Catholic churches in Crawley and a convent chapel in nearby Copthorne
are administered centrally from the Friary Church, which is the headquarters of Crawley parish. The regular expansion of the town from the 1950s to the 1980s, which saw new neighbourhoods being planned and built around the core of the old town every few years, increased the demand for additional churches. The first of these was the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven in Langley Green, the most northwesterly neighbourhood. Crawley New Town's Development Corporation
provided land for the concrete and brick structure, which opened in 1959. Three years later, St Bernadette's Church was built in Tilgate, in the south of the town, and in 1965 St Edward the Confessor's Church was provided in Pound Hill, to the east. The latter, by architect Alexander Lane, is of reinforced concrete
with pale brick and large areas of glass. The development of the Gossops Green neighbourhood on the southwestern side prompted the construction of St Theodore of Canterbury's Church in 1971; the cruck
-framed, brick-walled structure with tall brick buttress
es has a stone carving of the saint
on the exterior. In 1982, the Church of Christ the Lord in Broadfield, another southwestern neighbourhood, was licensed for Roman Catholic worship; originally an Anglican
church when built in 1980, it became a multi-denominational place of worship for the two denominations and for followers of the United Reformed Church
.
Four Sunday Masses are celebrated at the Friary Church: the First Mass of Sunday takes place on the preceding Saturday evening, and there are two morning services and one in the evening on Sunday. Two Masses are said on Holy Days of Obligation
. There is also a daily Mass, and Confession
is heard weekly.
St Francis of Assisi Primary School, which opened in 1950 and relocated to the Southgate neighbourhood in 1956, and the nearby St Wilfrid's Catholic School
, which opened in 1952 and became a comprehensive secondary school
in 1967, are associated with the church.
Crawley
Crawley is a town and local government district with Borough status in West Sussex, England. It is south of Charing Cross, north of Brighton and Hove, and northeast of the county town of Chichester, covers an area of and had a population of 99,744 at the time of the 2001 Census.The area has...
, a town and borough
Borough status in the United Kingdom
Borough status in the United Kingdom is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district...
in West Sussex
West Sussex
West Sussex is a county in the south of England, bordering onto East Sussex , Hampshire and Surrey. The county of Sussex has been divided into East and West since the 12th century, and obtained separate county councils in 1888, but it remained a single ceremonial county until 1974 and the coming...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The town's first permanent place of Roman Catholic worship was founded in 1861 next to a friary
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
whose members, from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin is an Order of friars in the Catholic Church, among the chief offshoots of the Franciscans. The worldwide head of the Order, called the Minister General, is currently Father Mauro Jöhri.-Origins :...
, had been invited to the area by a wealthy local family of Catholic converts. Crawley's transformation from a modest market town
Market town
Market town or market right is a legal term, originating in the medieval period, for a European settlement that has the right to host markets, distinguishing it from a village and city...
to a rapidly growing postwar New Town
New towns in the United Kingdom
Below is a list of some of the new towns in the United Kingdom created under the various New Town Acts of the 20th century. Some earlier towns were developed as Garden Cities or overspill estates early in the twentieth century. The New Towns proper were planned to disperse population following the...
in the mid-20th century made a larger church necessary, and in the late 1950s the ecclesiastical architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel was an English architect and writer, also a musician.-Life:He was educated at Eton College, and read music at Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked shortly for Sir Charles Nicholson, and then set up his own architectural practice...
was commissioned to build a new church. The friary closed in 1980 and has been demolished, but the large brick church still stands in a commanding position facing the town centre. English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
has listed the building at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance.
History
Crawley was founded in the early 13th century as a market town, and a church dedicated to St John the BaptistSt John the Baptist's Church, Crawley
St John the Baptist's Church is an Anglican church in Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. It is the parish church of Crawley, and is the oldest building in the town centre, dating from the 13th century—although many alterations have been made since, and only one wall remains of...
was founded a century later. The town lay partly in the parish of Ifield, a neighbouring village: the parish boundary ran up the middle of the wide High Street.
After the English Reformation
English Reformation
The English Reformation was the series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....
, Anglicanism
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
predominated in the area, Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
Nonconformity
Nonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
also became well established, and Roman Catholicism was almost unknown. A survey in 1582 found that two inhabitants of Ifield parish were recusants
Recusancy
In the history of England and Wales, the recusancy was the state of those who refused to attend Anglican services. The individuals were known as "recusants"...
. By the mid-19th century, the centuries-old hostility towards Roman Catholicism held by many Anglicans in Sussex had faded, and conversions
Religious conversion
Religious conversion is the adoption of a new religion that differs from the convert's previous religion. Changing from one denomination to another within the same religion is usually described as reaffiliation rather than conversion.People convert to a different religion for various reasons,...
from the established Church to Catholicism were becoming more common. Prominent local examples of this included several members of the Blunt family, the wealthy owners of the Crabbet Park estate just outside Crawley.
The Blunts (some members took the spelling Blount) and the Gales had been important members of local society for many generations. Leonard Gale senior moved to the area in the 1640s and became an ironmaster
Ironmaster
An ironmaster is the manager – and usually owner – of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain....
; he built up a large business and owned much land and property, all of which was inherited by his son Leonard junior. He bought the Crabbet Park estate in 1698 with £9,000 (£ as of ) of his inheritance. He became richer and more influential through the 18th century, despite the decline of the local iron industry, and on his death in 1750 Crabbet Park passed to his youngest daughter Sarah, who by then had married into the Blunt family. Upon her death in 1758 Crabbet Park passed to her widower Samuel Blunt, who later married Winifred Scawen. Their granddaughter, Mary Scawen Blunt, was a friend of the Roman Catholic convert Cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
John Henry Newman, and converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism herself. Her sons, Francis and Wilfrid, also converted in 1852.
In 1859, at the invitation of a Mrs. Montgomery (a relative of Mary Scawen Blunt), Italian Capuchin friars
Order of Friars Minor Capuchin
The Order of Friars Minor Capuchin is an Order of friars in the Catholic Church, among the chief offshoots of the Franciscans. The worldwide head of the Order, called the Minister General, is currently Father Mauro Jöhri.-Origins :...
arrived in Crawley. They stayed at her house on the Horsham Road (in the present-day Gossops Green neighbourhood) and celebrated Mass in its coach-house
Carriage house
A carriage house, also called remise or coach house, is an outbuilding which was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and the related tack.In Great Britain the farm building was called a Cart Shed...
, which was reordered to make a chapel and dedicated to St Philip
Philip the Apostle
Philip the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Later Christian traditions describe Philip as the apostle who preached in Greece, Syria, and Phrygia....
. Soon afterwards, Mary Scawen Blunt died; she asked her sons to found a permanent Roman Catholic church to serve Crawley and the surrounding area and a friary for the Capuchins. In 1860, Francis bought 3 acres (1.2 ha) of land near Crawley railway station
Crawley railway station
Crawley railway station is a railway station serving the town of Crawley in West Sussex. The station is 47 km south of London Victoria and is owned and operated by Southern...
and the town centre and arranged the design and construction of a friary and adjoining church; the builder was recorded as a Mr Ockendon. The friary formed three sides of a square around a courtyard; the north side was formed by the church, which was dedicated to St Francis
Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the lay Third Order of Saint Francis. St...
. All buildings were in the Early English Gothic style and were built of stone and brick, and the church itself had a bellcote
Bell-Cot
A bell-cot, bell-cote or bellcote, is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells, supported on brackets projecting from a wall or built on the roof of chapels or churches which have no towers. It often holds the Sanctus bell rung at the Consecration....
on the roof. The church and friary were dedicated and opened on 12 October 1861.
The church was one of the earliest Roman Catholic places of worship in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
, and it served a large area in its early years—as far as the villages of Rudgwick
Rudgwick
Rudgwick is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England located six miles west of Horsham on the north side of the A281 road. The border between Surrey and Sussex runs through the northern part of the village....
and Nuthurst
Nuthurst
Nuthurst is a village and civil parish in the Horsham District of West Sussex, England, 2.5 miles south Horsham.The parish has a land area of 1697 hectares . In the 2001 census 1711 people lived in 702 households, of whom 875 were economically active.Its Church of England parish church...
to the west, Copthorne
Copthorne, West Sussex
Copthorne is a village in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. It lies close to Gatwick Airport, south of London, north of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Nearby towns include Crawley to the southwest and East Grinstead to the east...
in the northeast and Lindfield
Lindfield, West Sussex
Lindfield is a village and civil parish in the Mid Sussex District of West Sussex, England. The parish lies to the north-east of Haywards Heath, of which the village is a part of the built-up area. It stands on the upper reaches of the River Ouse...
in the southeast. The town of Horsham
Horsham
Horsham is a market town with a population of 55,657 on the upper reaches of the River Arun in the centre of the Weald, West Sussex, in the historic County of Sussex, England. The town is south south-west of London, north-west of Brighton and north-east of the county town of Chichester...
was also covered. The friars became an important and well-respected part of the Crawley community: they undertook missionary work locally and in other countries, and were often seen around the town in their simple brown robes. Anselm Kenealy, a former friar, became the first Archbishop
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Simla
Shimla
Shimla , formerly known as Simla, is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared the summer capital of the British Raj in India. A popular tourist destination, Shimla is often referred to as the "Queen of Hills," a term coined by the British...
—the predecessor of the present Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Delhi in India.
On 23 November 1895, the Guild of St Anthony of Padua was founded at the church, which became its world headquarters on the instruction of Pope Pius X
Pope Pius X
Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...
. The Guardian of the friary established the guild on the 700th anniversary of Anthony of Padua
Anthony of Padua
Anthony of Padua or Anthony of Lisbon, O.F.M., was a Portuguese Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. Though he died in Padua, Italy, he was born to a wealthy family in Lisbon, Portugal, which is where he was raised...
's birth after a portrait in the church was identified as a 15th-century depiction of the saint. It had formed part of Mrs Montgomery's bequest to the church and friary, which included an ornate altar of marble
Marble
Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...
and alabaster
Alabaster
Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals, when used as a material: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; generally, the latter is the alabaster of the ancients...
and an accompanying altarpiece
Altarpiece
An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...
, both of which came from a chapel in her Italian villa. These, and the portrait, were placed in a side chapel in the church, which became a shrine to St Anthony. On 26 July 1946, at the request of the friars, Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
formally rededicated the church to St Francis and St Anthony.
Crawley was designated as a New Town
New towns in the United Kingdom
Below is a list of some of the new towns in the United Kingdom created under the various New Town Acts of the 20th century. Some earlier towns were developed as Garden Cities or overspill estates early in the twentieth century. The New Towns proper were planned to disperse population following the...
on 9 January 1947 by Lewis Silkin
Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin
Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin CH , was a British Labour Party politician.Silkin worked as a solicitor, before becoming a member of the London County Council in 1925. He chaired the LCC Town Planning and the Housing and Public Health Committees and was a member of the Central Housing Advisory...
, the Minister of Town and Country Planning in Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
's postwar Labour Government. The plans included increasing the population of about 9,500 to 50,000 by 1963 by building a series of residential neighbourhoods around an expanded town centre. By 1960, this target population had been exceeded, and plans were underway for further expansion. The friary church was not large enough to cater for the increased number of worshippers, and some structural problems were discovered. Local ecclesiastical architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel was an English architect and writer, also a musician.-Life:He was educated at Eton College, and read music at Trinity College, Cambridge. He worked shortly for Sir Charles Nicholson, and then set up his own architectural practice...
was commissioned to design a new church. On 14 June 1958, the 119th anniversary of Francis Scawen Blunt's birthday, the foundation stone was placed, and two days later demolition of the old church began. The new church was arranged at a right-angle to its predecessor, which allowed old tombs to be incorporated into the building's foundations instead of being destroyed. The sanctuary was built on the site of the old nave
Nave
In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...
. Local construction firm James Longley and Company built the church.
The new building was consecrated and opened on 18 November 1959, the 100th anniversary of the Capuchin friars' arrival in Crawley. The friars left the town in 1980 and moved to Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
, after which the church was no longer the headquarters of the Guild of St Anthony. The friary buildings behind Goodhart-Rendel's church were demolished, but the large adjacent burial ground remains. A 19th-century burial vault
Burial vault
Burial vault may refer to:*Burial vault , protective coffin enclosure*Burial vault , underground tomb...
for members of the Blunt/Blount family stands alongside the graves of Catherine "Skittles" Walters
Catherine Walters
Catherine Walters, also known as "Skittles" , was a fashion trendsetter and one of the last of the great courtesans of Victorian London...
—Wilfrid Blunt's mistress and the subject of some of his poems—and Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas , nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde...
, Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's lover "Bosie", who was buried here in 1945 alongside his mother. Francis Blunt's tomb stands inside a private chapel (the Blunt Chapel) behind the altar, next to that of his sister Alice; both died in 1872. Wilfrid Blunt carved a stone effigy
Effigy
An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
of his brother in friar's robes, which rests on top of the tomb.
An internal reorganisation and rebuilding was carried out in 1988, which opened up the interior and changed the small sanctuary. Another refurbishment took place between October 2008 and March 2009, during which time the church was closed. Architect Deirdre Waddington's work, which cost £750,000, won a Royal Institute of British Architects
Royal Institute of British Architects
The Royal Institute of British Architects is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally.-History:...
prize. As well as structural work and improved disabled access, a mural of Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
's coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...
was added.
Architecture
Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel was an "eclectic, imaginative and inventive" architect whose designs were rational rather than whimsical, but still had decorative touches and variety. Brick was his favoured building material, and the Friary Church is "instantly recognisable" as one of his designs. Ian NairnIan Nairn
Ian Nairn was a British architectural critic and topographer.He had no formal architecture qualifications; he was a mathematics graduate and a Royal Air Force pilot...
and Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...
described it as "a composition of oddly assembled parts". The cruciform
Cruciform
Cruciform means having the shape of a cross or Christian cross.- Cruciform architectural plan :This is a common description of Christian churches. In Early Christian, Byzantine and other Eastern Orthodox forms of church architecture this is more likely to mean a tetraconch plan, a Greek cross,...
structure is a large but low-set building of dark greyish brick with some intricately detailed red-brick courses
Course (architecture)
A course is a continuous horizontal layer of similarly-sized building material one unit high, usually in a wall. The term is almost always used in conjunction with unit masonry such as brick, cut stone, or concrete masonry units .-Styles:...
. The roof is laid with pantiles. The main entrance, a round-arched doorway in a slightly recessed bay
Bay (architecture)
A bay is a unit of form in architecture. This unit is defined as the zone between the outer edges of an engaged column, pilaster, or post; or within a window frame, doorframe, or vertical 'bas relief' wall form.-Defining elements:...
, sits below five tall, narrow windows with elaborate tracery
Tracery
In architecture, Tracery is the stonework elements that support the glass in a Gothic window. The term probably derives from the 'tracing floors' on which the complex patterns of late Gothic windows were laid out.-Plate tracery:...
; the brickwork surrounding these is diapered.
Inside, the ceiling of the long nave is of concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
, painted and laid out in a hexagonal pattern. The nave is flanked by aisles with plain arches, above which runs a tunnel vault
Barrel vault
A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault or a wagon vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve along a given distance. The curves are typically circular in shape, lending a semi-cylindrical appearance to the total design...
. A small, slightly offset tower sits on top of the crossing
Crossing (architecture)
A crossing, in ecclesiastical architecture, is the junction of the four arms of a cruciform church.In a typically oriented church , the crossing gives access to the nave on the west, the transept arms on the north and south, and the choir on the east.The crossing is sometimes surmounted by a tower...
, which originally had an arch leading through to the nave. This was removed as part of the reordering work in 1988, and a hidden steel structure had to be inserted instead to support it. The shrine to St Anthony of Padua was moved from the old church and is in the south aisle. There is an array of wooden fixtures throughout the church, including screens, galleries and pew
Pew
A pew is a long bench seat or enclosed box used for seating members of a congregation or choir in a church, or sometimes in a courtroom.-Overview:Churches were not commonly furnished with permanent pews before the Protestant Reformation...
s, but Goodhart-Rendel's altar and altar rails were lost when the reordering of the sanctuary took place. Part of the painted ceiling was also destroyed by this work. A new altar was obtained from a church in Woking
Woking
Woking is a large town and civil parish that shares its name with the surrounding local government district, located in the west of Surrey, UK. It is part of the Greater London Urban Area and the London commuter belt, with frequent trains and a journey time of 24 minutes to Waterloo station....
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, which no longer required it.
The church today
The Friary Church was listed at Grade II by English HeritageEnglish Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
on 25 October 2007; this defines it as a "nationally important" building of "special interest". As of February 2001, it was one of 85 Grade II structures, and 100 listed buildings and structures of all grades, in the Borough of Crawley. English Heritage regards it as architecturally important as it is one of the best works by Goodhart-Rendel, an "eminent" ecclesiastical architect, and historically significant both as an "important component of the dramatic expansion of the town in the mid-20th century" and as a piece of postwar planning.
The five other Roman Catholic churches in Crawley and a convent chapel in nearby Copthorne
Copthorne, West Sussex
Copthorne is a village in the Mid Sussex district of West Sussex, England. It lies close to Gatwick Airport, south of London, north of Brighton, and northeast of the county town of Chichester. Nearby towns include Crawley to the southwest and East Grinstead to the east...
are administered centrally from the Friary Church, which is the headquarters of Crawley parish. The regular expansion of the town from the 1950s to the 1980s, which saw new neighbourhoods being planned and built around the core of the old town every few years, increased the demand for additional churches. The first of these was the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven in Langley Green, the most northwesterly neighbourhood. Crawley New Town's Development Corporation
Development Corporation
In England and Wales, Development Corporations are bodies set up by the UK government and charged with the urban development of an area, outside the usual system of Town and Country Planning in the United Kingdom...
provided land for the concrete and brick structure, which opened in 1959. Three years later, St Bernadette's Church was built in Tilgate, in the south of the town, and in 1965 St Edward the Confessor's Church was provided in Pound Hill, to the east. The latter, by architect Alexander Lane, is of reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
with pale brick and large areas of glass. The development of the Gossops Green neighbourhood on the southwestern side prompted the construction of St Theodore of Canterbury's Church in 1971; the cruck
Cruck
A cruck or crook frame is a curved timber, one of a pair, which supports the roof of a building, used particularly in England. This type of timber framing consists of long, generally bent, timber beams that lean inwards and form the ridge of the roof. These posts are then generally secured by a...
-framed, brick-walled structure with tall brick buttress
Buttress
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall...
es has a stone carving of the saint
Theodore of Tarsus
Theodore was the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury, best known for his reform of the English Church and establishment of a school in Canterbury....
on the exterior. In 1982, the Church of Christ the Lord in Broadfield, another southwestern neighbourhood, was licensed for Roman Catholic worship; originally an Anglican
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
church when built in 1980, it became a multi-denominational place of worship for the two denominations and for followers of the United Reformed Church
United Reformed Church
The United Reformed Church is a Christian church in the United Kingdom. It has approximately 68,000 members in 1,500 congregations with some 700 ministers.-Origins and history:...
.
Four Sunday Masses are celebrated at the Friary Church: the First Mass of Sunday takes place on the preceding Saturday evening, and there are two morning services and one in the evening on Sunday. Two Masses are said on Holy Days of Obligation
Holy Day of Obligation
In the Catholic Church, Holy Days of Obligation or Holidays of Obligation, less commonly called Feasts of Precept, are the days on which, as of the Code of Canon Law states,-Eastern Catholic Churches:...
. There is also a daily Mass, and Confession
Sacrament of Penance (Catholic Church)
In the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation is the method by which individual men and women may be freed from sins committed after receiving the sacrament of Baptism...
is heard weekly.
St Francis of Assisi Primary School, which opened in 1950 and relocated to the Southgate neighbourhood in 1956, and the nearby St Wilfrid's Catholic School
St Wilfrid's Catholic School, Crawley
St Wilfrid's Catholic School is a voluntary aided comprehensive Catholic secondary school in Crawley, West Sussex, England for pupils aged 11 to 18. It caters for around 900 pupils in years 7 to 13, including around 100 in its sixth form...
, which opened in 1952 and became a comprehensive secondary school
Secondary school
Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...
in 1967, are associated with the church.