A simple red brick Gothic church of late nineteenth century date, occupying a prominent position in the townscape of Eastwood. Amongst the furnishings is a medieval altar slab from the nearby Carthusian house of Beauvale Priory.

Eastwood is a former coal mining town in the Broxtowe district, lying on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border. Its most famous son was D.H. Lawrence, who perhaps over-romanticised the place when he wrote of his childhood home that ‘Robin Hood and his merry men were never very far away’. The nineteenth century saw great expansion of the settlement, due to the growth of the coalmines, ironworks and the network of canals and railways across the Erewash Valley. It has been estimated that some 10% of those working in these expanding industries were Irish Catholics, but the nearest Mass centre was at Ilkeston.

In the 1880s nearby Beauvale House was the seat of the Earl Cowper, whose sister was Lady Amabel Kerr, Catholic wife of Lord Walter Kerr, Admiral of the Fleet. The Kerrs acquired a property then known as Ellerslie House on the corner of Derby Road and Bailey Grove to provide a chapel and accommodation for a priest, who came once a month from Ilkeston or the Cathedral. In 1889 Eastwood (with Long Eaton) was made a separate mission and the site of the present church was acquired, again through the generosity of the Kerr family. The presbytery was built before the church, which opened in 1897.

In 1935 a chapel was built off the (liturgical) south side of the church honouring the local Carthusians St John Houghton and St Robert Lawrence, amongst the first Catholic Martyrs of the Reformation, successive Priors of the Charterhouse at Beauvale and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 5 May 1535. The altar slab (mensa) in the chapel is medieval and was brought here from Beauvale Priory in 1942 by Fr Martin Finneran.

In 1975 extensions to the presbytery by Reynolds & Scott provided a meeting room, sacristy, small kitchen and garage. In 1982 a new parish hall was built from designs by Montague Associates of Derby. More recently (in 2008) an extensive scheme of refurbishment and reordering was carried out under the direction of John Halton Design Ltd of Lincoln. A porch/narthex at the west end and an extension to the parish hall were built at about the same time.

The church is in a simple lancet Gothic style, built of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with painted stone dressings and a machine-made tile roof. It is orientated north-south, but this description follows conventional liturgical orientation, i.e. as if the altar faced east.

The main west front has an entrance porch/narthex designed in contextual style and materials, added in 2008. Behind this the west front has a triple lancet window, with black painted timber framing in the gable and a projecting bellcote at the apex of the gable housing one bell. On the side, the main elevation facing the road consists of five bays, each separated by stepped attached buttresses. There are paired lancet windows in each bay, apart from in the westernmost bay, which has a projecting brick appendage, formerly a baptistery but now serving as an accessible WC. The east elevation is plain and windowless, relieved only by attached buttresses, and the south elevation has two and a half bays facing towards a small garden and is otherwise attached to the presbytery and its various additions.

The western narthex leads into a space under an organ gallery (the organ dates from 1994 and was made by Jonathan Wallace of Nottingham). The main space of the church is a single volume, with a separate (1935) chapel giving off the south side. There is an oversailing timber roof of hammerbeam design, ceiled at collar level. The walls are painted and plastered, and there are stained glass roundels of saints in the lancet windows. The character of the interior belongs largely to an extensive and sympathetic remodelling of 2007-8. Features dating from this time include a new Derbyshire sandstone altar, reredos panelling, sanctuary seating, ambo and font. On the east wall is a crucifix against a background of hand printed red Watts wallpaper, with a canopy over.

The most notable furnishing is the mensa in the Martyrs’ Chapel, possibly dating from the foundation of Beauvale Priory in 1343, and brought here six hundred years later. It is incorporated in an altar with a reredos painting depicting St John Houghton and St Robert Lawrence, being led with others from the Tower of London to execution at Tyburn. According to the parish priest, it was painted by Dom. Pedro Subercaseaux, a Benedictine monk who was born in Rome in about 1880 and became a monk at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight (information from Canon Dolan). The altar also holds carved wooden statues of the two saints by Theodore Kern, who also carved the statues of Our Lady and St Joseph, now placed on new pedestals in the corners of the sanctuary.

A striking and idiosyncratic Gothic design of the interwar period, old fashioned for its date, but nevertheless of some interest. Its tower with crown spire is a local landmark.

A mission was established in Ilkeston in 1858, catering mainly for newly-arrived Irish industrial and agricultural workers. Fr C. W. Tasker was given charge of the mission, and in his letter of appointment, Bishop Roskell wrote: ‘there are upwards of 500 Catholics in Ilkeston and its immediate neighbourhood, without a chapel or even a school to meet in, or a single vestment or chalice, or any requisites for Divine service’. To start with, Mass was said in a disused factory on Nottingham Road, while Fr Tasker commuted to Ilkeston from St Mary’s Derby. The mission then extended as far as Mansfield.

In 1862 Fr Tasker’s successor, Fr McKenna, opened a schoolroom-cum-chapel on Regent Street. During the time of his successor, Fr O’Neill (1867-78) the chapel was extended with an apsidal sanctuary (1875), a separate schoolroom was built (1876) and two adjacent cottages converted (or rebuilt) to form the presbytery. It was also in 1875 that the church was dedicated to Our Lady and St Thomas of Hereford; St Thomas was a member of the Cantelupe family, erstwhile lords of the manor in Ilkeston.

In the 1880s and 90s the mission was in the care of Canon McCarthy, who revived the ancient devotion to Our Lady of Dale, with an annual pilgrimage to nearby Dale Abbey. In 1891 Bishop Bagshawe celebrated Mass in the ruins of the abbey and the altar stone used on that occasion was brought to the Lady Chapel at Ilkeston.

On 25 July 1921 Bishop Dunn laid the foundation stone for a new church on the site of the old one. The architects were Charles W Hunt ARIBA and his assistant George Lee, the contractors Messrs Lehane & Co of Darley Dale and the stonemason Jack Torr of Ilkeston. Funds were short, and in the first phase of work only the three western bays of the nave were built, and a temporary brick east wall formed. The main body of the church was completed in 1930 and opened and consecrated on 24 May of that year. The fall in land allowed for a crypt to be built beneath the east end of the church, housing a shrine to Our Lady and other uses. The total cost incurred by 1930 was £7,800; volunteers carried out much of the work (this was the period of the Great Depression and the General Strike) and the parish priest, Fr de Mattos, ensured that the work was paid for as it proceeded, incurring no debt. The building was faced largely with Darley Dale stone, but parts of the less visible north wall were faced in cheaper brick. Plans for the completion of the tower and spire were prepared by George Lee in 1931 and in 1933 a bell was hung in the completed tower.

The church was furnished by degrees. The high altar was of Darley Dale stone and the rood figures painted by a Mr Carlin of Chaddesden. The timber altars to the Sacred Heart and Our Lady were installed by 1930, as was the font, carved by Jack Torr. Benches, Stations of the Cross, organ frontal and a western porch were added later, in the 1950s. More recently (2006), the western porch has been replaced with a new and larger porch, with associated remodelling of the west end of the church, from designs by John Halton Design Ltd of Lincoln. Sanctuary reordering took place at the same time.

Description

The church is in Early English Gothic Style and is of brick construction faced in Darley Dale stone (except for part of the north wall, which is brick faced), with a Westmorland slate roof. On plan it consists of an aisleless nave with organ loft adjunct to the north, and an eastern chancel flanked by side chapels and placed over a crypt. There is a tower with a crown spire at the southeast corner, and a modern porch extension at the west end.

The south flank elevation to Regent Street is of five bays, with a restless rhythm of lower bays with shorter paired lancets alternating with higher bays with raised staggered parapets and longer paired lancets. The tower at the southeast corner has clasped buttresses and is of three stages, culminating in a crown spire, perhaps modelled on that of St Dunstan in the East in the City of London. The canted east end has tall lancet windows and is raised over a crypt, demarcated by a stringcourse. On the north side there is a flying buttress over the side chapel rising up to the eaves of the chancel roof and further west a northern projection (housing the organ chamber). Below this is a low link to the earlier (1870s) red brick presbytery. Behind this link the north wall is faced in red brick. The west front is now dominated by the new entrance porch added in 2006. This is designed in a contextual manner, faced in stone of similar coursing to the original, and Gothic in design.

The entrance leads into a new narthex area with a spiral stair rising to a new glass fronted western gallery holding overspill seating. The interior of the five-bay nave is a single volume, with the same restless expression of the bay divisions as evinced externally. Oversailing it is a black and white roof of hammerbeam type construction, raised in the high bays. On the north side, one bay houses the organ at the upper level (the gallery front was added in 1951), with confessionals and link through to the presbytery below. There is a narrow chancel arch rising to the full height of the nave, flanked by lower pointed arches to the side chapels. The chancel has a similar roof to that of the nave.

A utilitarian brick design of the early 1950s, in the stripped basilican style popular at that time. An intended tower was never built.

In 1933 a former furniture shop on Derby Road became the first Mass Centre in Stapleford and was known as ‘the upper room’. Eighteen months later the site in Midland Road was acquired for a permanent church. However, it was not until 6 October 1951 that Bishop Ellis laid the foundation stone for the present church. Plans were prepared by J. W. M. Dudding FRIBA of Regent Street, Nottingham and originally allowed for a 40 ft tower on the north side and presbytery to the east (in the event the tower was never built on account of a shortage of building materials and funds, and a building in Lime Grove continued to serve as the presbytery). The contractor was F. Perks & Son of long Eaton. The church was designed to seat approximately 175, and the cost was about £8,500, minus the furnishings. The first Mass was said in the new church on Sunday 2 November 1952. A parish hall was built shortly afterwards. The church has since been altered and extended on the south side.

The Diocesan Yearbook for 1953 described the furnishing of the new church:

‘The altar is built of stone quarried near Dale, and consists of a slab 8 feet by 4 feet supported on five columns, an idea reminiscent of the catacombs, where such altar arrangements are frequent […] Behind and above the altar is the reredos in unstained oak, surmounted by an impressive baldacchino. The carving is the traditional vine, a symbol of Our Divine Lord and the Blessed Sacrament. Above the Tabernacle a carved and hammered oak dove is suspended. The candlesticks and sanctuary lamp to match, designed by the parish priest, are finished in chromium, the better to tone with the oak of the church, all of which is in its natural colour. The font is the special design of the architect, Mr J. W. M. Dudding, of Nottingham. The cover has a bronze cross which, by turning, acts as a lock to keep the cover in position. The choir gallery over the entrance has a reed organ with an electric blower’.

Stapleford was an independent parish from 1947 to 2003, whereupon it became a chapel-of-ease to Ilkeston.

Description

A small church in the reduced basilican style popular in the mid-twentieth century. Without its intended tower, the design is somewhat utilitarian. The architect was J. W. M. Dudding of Nottingham, and copies of the original drawings are held at the diocesan archive. The church is built of red brick laid in garden wall bond (three stretchers and then a header), with reconstituted stone/concrete dressings and pantile roofs. It consists of a nave and chancel of one volume (six bays), with a narrower bay at the west end containing a choir gallery. A baptistery gives off the north side of the nave at the west end, and sacristies and ancillary structures give off the rear (south) elevation). The original main entrance was at the west end with a pair of doors within a staggered brick surround; this entrance has now been blocked and replaced with a stained glass window, and the main entrance is now via a newer addition on the south side. However the entrance door canopy survives, with an arch above, blind except for a small circular window at the top. The main elevation towards the street was intended to have a projecting tower in the second bay from the east.