Downside Abbey - The Abbey Church

The Abbey Church

The building of Downside Abbey Church was begun in the 19th century, and ended with completion of the nave after World War I. The Abbey Church houses the relics of St Oliver Plunkett, an Irish martyr, who entrusted his body to the care of a Benedictine monk of the English Benedictine Congregation. The church is one of only three in the United Kingdom to be designated a minor basilica by the Roman Catholic Church, the others being St. Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham and Corpus Christi Priory, Manchester.

The church is built in the Gothic Revival style, and is designed to rival in size the medieval cathedrals of England that were lost to the Catholic Church through the Reformation. A magnificent ensemble of work is represented by a galaxy of architectural talent of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The earliest part is the richly decorated transepts by Archibald Matthias Dunn and Edward Joseph Hansom, dating from 1882. The choir is the masterpiece of Thomas Garner (who is buried there), dedicated in 1905. The soaring nave by Giles Gilbert Scott (c. 1923-25) remains unfinished, with its western wall in crude Lias stone standing bare and undecorated. The Lady Chapel is acknowledged as one of the most complete and successful schemes of Sir Ninian Comper, with a reredos and altar furnishings incorporating medieval fragments and a reliquary containing the skull of St Thomas de Cantilupe. The tower, completed in 1938, at 166 feet (55m), is the second highest in Somerset. The choir stalls are modelled on the famous stalls in Chester Cathedral.

Downside Abbey has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner described the Abbey as "the most splendid demonstration of the renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England. If ever there was an excuse for building in period forms in the twentieth century, it is here".