Draft History of St Paul’s
WEST DERBY - DOMESDAY BOOK TO REFORMATION
Catholics of the district for West Derby had been worshipping in early days in chapels, such as Gillmoss Chapel; St Swithins and Gillmoss Farm. Following ancient tradition, some wealthy families still had private oratories in their homes at Croxteth Hall and St Helens church, Sefton, which were provided by the Molyneux family.
THE REFORMATION PERIOD IN WEST DERBY
The Reformation under Henry VIII saw the suppression of the Catholic faith in England and the subsequent dissolution of the monasteries in the mid 1500’s really meant an end to open Catholic worship.
West Derby Chapel of St Mary the Virgin, as it appeared in 1850. Monument today marks site of original altar.
The Liverpool area was well known for its lack of support for the newly created Church of England. The banning of Catholics from West Derby chapel in 1552 led to secret Masses being held in Croxteth Hall but, by 1768, the Molyneux family decided that life was becoming too risky to continue using the Hall and provided a converted loft in a house in Gillmoss to allow worship to continue.
THE EXPANSION OF OUR WEST DERBY PARISH
The Catholic Emancipation in 1829 restored the right of Catholics to worship openly. A church (St Swithins) was built in Croxteth in 1824 and this took on the role of parish church of West Derby but it soon became inadequate for the large number of worshippers.
By the late 19th century. rural West Derby Village was growing rapidly. Merchants and professionals, desiring a country residence within easy reach of Liverpool, found the area attractive. Also, servants and tradesmen moved to West Derby to provide service or local business needs for the merchants.
The improvement in public transport continued with the introduction of horse drawn tramcars in Liverpool in 1862 and, by 1879, they were covering West Derby and surrounding areas, thereby helping the expanding communities to travel for worship, work and pleasure.
WEST DERBY MISSION – THE BIRTH OF OUR PARISH
The population expansion identified the need for a new Catholic Mission in West Derby and, in June 1878, the deeds for a chapel and school in Bonsall Road were drawn up and were eventually transferred onto Bishop O’Reilly so this marked the birth of our parish.
The initial parish in the late 19th century included a large part of the current parish of St Cecilia’s but of course the population was not then quite as high.
In 1879, Father Clarkson, from St Oswald’s in Old Swan, was nominated as the first Mission Priest, but there were no plans for a presbytery. St. Paul’s was designated a school chapel in 1879 records, and described as a simple Gothic brick building, being for a maximum of 200 parishioners including children. It served the religious needs of the Parish for thirty five years and was to continue as a school hall and parish club rooms.
Father Clarkson continued to live at St Oswald’s, until the completion of the church building in November 1880. Then he rented a house at 9 Bonsall Road at a rent of £18 per year.
Shortly after the Chapel opened in 1881, the school building was opened, catering for both girls and boys up to a limit of 189 children, although early pupil numbers were between 65 and 86 in the first five years. The first report 30th November 1881 states, “The discipline and instruction are of unusual efficiency and promise”.
Figure 1 Map showing church in Bonsall Road in 1894.
Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.
THE NEW PARISH CHURCH
The first site considered for the new church was at the top of Bonsall Road, with the church fronting on to Eaton Road. The plot of land belonging to the parish was extensive, and lay between what we now know as Eaton Road and Town Row. The school occupied about one fifth of the plot in Bonsall Road. For the next 10 years, Father Clarkson and the diocese considered other areas for the new church instead and selling the remainder of the Bonsall Road plot (keeping the school).
Upon the death of Father Clarkson in 1891, a new parish priest, Father Leeming, was appointed to St Paul's and lived at Holly Grange on the corner of Spring Grove and Town Row. An apparently financially astute man, Father Leeming
worked towards the building of a larger church for St Paul's, which was eventually made possible by donations from local residents and business people, including one William Leeming, a very strong Catholic and uncle to Father Leeming.
The social pattern of the Parish was changing; by the late 1800’s more professional merchants had moved out to the popular suburbs and in early 1900’s electric trams went to the village. Motor buses were coming along Queens Drive and wealthier parishioners had their own transport.
In 1893, the inadequacy of the Catholic Cemeteries at Ford in North Liverpool and at St Oswald’s, Old Swan became evident. The Yew Tree Estate was acquired and, on 24th June 1893, Bishop O’Reilly consecrated the land during a magnificent ceremony; the cemetery for Catholics was to be served by clergy from St. Paul’s church, West Derby.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE NEW CHURCH IN SPRING GROVE
Figure 2 Showing Spring Grove in 1909.
Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.
In 1904, the widow of John Prince arranged for the conveyancing of the land in Spring Grove to Bishop Whiteside. John Prince had bequeathed the site in his will.
The parish of St Paul expanded in population to such an extent, that it had to be sub-divided and, in 1905, a new parish at St Cecilia’s, Green Lane, was created to cope with the increasing number of inhabitants. The parish boundaries were changed - now cut off at Queens Drive.
On 15th April 1908 William Leeming bequeathed £6,000 to his trust “for the benefit of building a Roman Catholic Church at West Derby on land which has already been bought or which may be available for the purpose”. A further £4,000 was bequeathed to specifically decorate the church and was to be supplemented by any balance of the £6,000 that had not been spent on the building of the church.
The will also contained a note to say that £2,000 would be left to Bishop Whiteside or his successor at the time of Mr Leeming’s death in 1912. In a further private note to the Bishop, it was stated that the sum was to be invested for the perpetual endowment of the Church in West Derby – in return he asked that Masses be said regularly for his wife, sister and himself.
The very respected and influential family firm, Pugin and Pugin, were appointed to design the new church in Spring Grove and, on 24th January 1914, Archbishop Whiteside laid the foundation stone, assisted by Father Leeming. The work went ahead and a year later the first service was held in St Pauls, Spring Grove, on 23 February 1915. The church bell was consecrated three weeks later and dedicated to St William in honour of William Leeming. When entering St Paul's Church, there is a plaque, on the left-hand half-pillar.
Figure 3 Showing new church in 1928. Note no school built at that time.
Reproduced with permission of the National Library of Scotland.
ST PAUL’S PARISH – AN EVER EXPANDING CONGREGATION
St Pauls ceased to be a rural parish and became one in which Father Leeming, sometimes with the help of other resident priests, served an ever growing community from the nearby expanding housing estates of West Derby, Deysbrook and Yew Tree.
In 1928 Father Leeming died and was succeeded by Father Kavanagh who was priest in charge until 1930 when Father Alphonse Van Wassenhove was appointed Parish Priest assisted by one curate. The new parish priest was regarded by many as its most colourful Priest. Older members of the Parish remember him standing outside the Church after Mass on a Sunday morning dressed in a broad- rimmed Roma hat and Soutane looking like a French Curate.
Some thought Father Van could be blunt - he missed little that went on in the Parish and was an astute man who did not always see eye to eye with Parishioners.
There is a letter in the Parish Archives at The Cathedral of him complaining to the Archbishop about not being consulted over new boundaries, responsibilities for church and religious buildings in his parish when St Margaret Mary’s parish was formed in 1931; his view was that he was the Parish Priest and should be afforded more respect in such decisions.
The parish increased by about sixty percent in numbers during Father Van’s tenure and so another curate was appointed in 1943.
POST WORLD WAR II EXPANSION
The war years had been particularly difficult with increasing liabilities of the schools and the increased size of the Parish and by the end of the war, Fr Van Wassenhove was approaching seventy. In order to plan for the future, he gave Archbishop Downey advance notice of his intention to retire which he did in 1945, when he retired to Belgium and died on 21st February 1951.
In 1945 Father Timothy O’Donoghue was appointed as the new Parish Priest, he was born in 1901 in Kerry and ordained for Liverpool Diocese in 1925. When Father Tim took over the Parish of St. Paul’s, it was still bounded by fields and farms on the Deysbrook side and even Leyfield Road and Town Row retained a semi-rural air with several farms in the vicinity; nevertheless, the number of parishioners was nearly 2000.
St. Paul’s Repair and Building Society was established in 1949 as a charitable trust to meet the financial liabilities that the coming years would require. Funds had to be found for the land to be purchased to build the new St. Paul’s School and Parish Hall.
By 1950, the Father O’Donoghue had been appointed Dean and the next ten years were to be a time of great activity for St. Paul’s Clergy. There were three curates but with 4000 parishioners, the administrative duties etc increased.
In May 1975, Bishop Gray visited the parish and reported on how it had more schools, convent and institutions than any other parish in the Diocese. However, with Monsignor Breen as parish priest with two assistant priests, they were ‘collectively deemed’ by Bishop Gray ‘to be running a parish which was solidly grounded in the faith and well cared for pastorally’.
Fr Timothy O’Donoghue VF
Fr Peter Nicholson
Fr Anthony Bullen
Canon Sean Kirwin
Canon Vincent Burrowes
Fr Darren Carden
PARISH PRIESTS OF ST PAUL'S
Fr. William Leeming 1892-1927
Fr. B. Kavanagh 1927-1930
Fr Alphonsus Van Wassenhove 1930-1945
Fr Timothy O’Donoghue VF 1945-1973
Monsignor Sydney Breen 1973-1975
Fr Anthony Bullen 1975-1980
Canon Vincent Burrowes 1980-1992
Fr Peter Nicholson 1992 - 2004
Canon Sean Kirwin 2004-2017
Fr Darren Carden 2017- 2018
After 1997, the Parish Priest of St Paul served in both parishes of St Paul and of St Timothy.
You may be interested in the History of St Timothy’s Parish as well.
Notes
It was decided by the Parish Centenary History Group not to proceed any further with this work but to leave the history from 1960 onwards to a future generation who can be more detached.
We are all grateful to Canon Sean Kirwin who set up the Parish Centenary History Group in 2015 and encouraged them, while he was Parish Priest.
The webmaster is very grateful to the Parish Centenary History Group for allowing their work to be edited for this page. It is hoped by the group that they will publish a document with more details in the near future than what is on this page.
Also, grateful thanks to Jack Cooper for his history of the parish, published in 1989-90. Some of the drawings by Ray Crawford in that work were scanned and appear on this page.
Gratitude to people who have allowed us to use photographs