Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark - Original Cathedral

Original Cathedral

The Papists Act of 1778 brought a certain limited freedom to those of the faith. Priests no longer moved in fear of imprisonment. Roman Catholics could run their own schools and could once more acquire property. In protest against the act, Lord George Gordon, on 2 June 1780, gathered a large crowd in St George's Fields to march on Westminster. Refused a hearing, they became violent and so began a week of burning, plundering and killing in which many Roman Catholic chapels and houses were destroyed. There is a legend that the high altar of the cathedral stands on the spot where the march began.

In 1786 there was only one Roman Catholic chapel in the whole of south London, located at Bermondsey. It was then that Fr Thomas Walsh, a Douai priest, for £20 a year hired a room in Bandyleg Walk (near where the Southwark fire station now stands). Within two years, the numbers attending the little chapel had increased so rapidly that a new building became essential. In 1793 a large chapel dedicated to St George was opened in the London Road at a cost of £2,000. It was designed by James Taylor of Weybridge, Surrey. According to tradition it was here that the first High Mass was celebrated in London, outside the chapels of ambassadors, since the time of King James II of England. The occasion was the Solemn Requiem sung for the repose of the soul of Louis XVI of France, who was executed on 21 January 1793.

It was to St George's that Fr Thomas Doyle came in 1820, when the congregation stood at around 7,000. He became the first chaplain in 1829. In the same year, the Catholic Emancipation Act removed nearly all the legal disabilities which Catholics had suffered for 250 years. As Fr Doyle's congregation increased to 15,000 by 1829, the idea grew in his mind of a great church with the dimensions of a long and lofty cathedral. By 1839 enough money had been collected to make a start and the present site in St George's Fields (then an open space) was purchased for £3,200.

Augustus Pugin, the noted architect of the Gothic Revival, was commissioned to design the church. Lack of funds, however, prevented the committee from accepting his first design of a cruciform cathedral on a grand scale and less ambitious plans had to be prepared. Work began on the old cathedral in 1840, the foundation stone being laid on 8 September. The church was solemnly opened by Bishop Nicholas Wiseman (later Cardinal Wiseman) on 4 July 1848. To mark the occasion Pope Pius IX sent a golden chalice and paten as a gift.

Two years later Pope Pius restored the English Roman Catholic hierarchy and St George's was chosen as the cathedral church of the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Southwark, which was to cover the whole of southern England. For the next half-century, until the opening of Westminster Cathedral, St George's was the centre of Roman Catholic life in London. Thomas Grant was made the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Southwark; Fr Doyle became the Provost and Administrator and remained so until his death on 6 June 1879. He is buried in the crypt. The new cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Butt on 7 November 1894 and on that day every year the feast of the dedication of the cathedral is celebrated throughout the diocese.