A very brief history of St Dominic's Priory:
With the great influx of Catholic immigrants from the 1840's on, religious orders were needed to run parishes throughout London. Records for the 1860's show Catholic Churches springing up all over London, many of them run by religious orders. So it was that in 1861 Cardinal Wiseman invited the Dominican Friars to take over the mission at Kentish Town. At first they lived at 20 Fortess Terrace. But within a year or so they had purchased about three acres along Southampton Road in a district known as Haverstock Hill, and had the Cardinal's permission to build a Priory and a Church there. It is said that the Cardinal himself chose the site. On the 6th August 1863, the Feast of the Transfiguration, Fr Jandel, the Master of the Dominican Order, blessed the foundation stone. Work must have progressed quickly because by the autumn of 1867 the Priory had been built and a temporary Church had been set up in the Priory, directly above where Blackfriars Hall is now.
The Priory Church wasn't to be completed until 1883. It was
in the intervening period between 1867 and 1878 when building
began that the design of the Priory Church was developed.
A man called Thomas Walmesley from Tunbridge Wells dreamed
of building a Church in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes somewhere
in England, "to mark the gratitude of the Catholics of the
United Kingdom for the many graces and blessings received
through Our Lady of Lourdes". In 1873 he approached the Dominican
Community at Haverstock Hill and they readily agreed. Since
the great devotion at Lourdes is the Rosary, the title of
the Church would be "Our Lady of the Rosary" and its structure
would reflect the structure of the Rosary. Within the Church,
there would be fourteen side-chapels each dedicated to a mystery
of the Rosary with the final fifteenth mystery, the crowning
of Our Lady as Queen of Heaven, commemorated in the stained
glass window above the high altar. In a more spacious side-chapel
there would be a life-size replica of the grotto at Lourdes.
This sanctuary he hoped would become a great centre of pilgrimage
and would rival even Walsingham in popularity. He wrote: "all
that is needed to make it so is the devotion of the faithful.
Prayers can do more than the architect. May our hopes be realised".
Work began on the Church in 1878 and 5 years later in 1883 the Church was opened, having cost about £40,000, with the title "Our Lady of the Rosary" with fourteen side-chapels, each dedicated to a mystery of the Rosary and with the final mystery depicted in stained glass over the high altar, just as Walmesley had hoped. Only the replica of the Lourdes Grotto was missing. For a while the Church did become a place of pilgrimage. For example, in 1895 a pilgrimage was organised for Rosary Sunday with people coming to our Church, dubbed "Our Lady's Shrine in London" , from all over the city and beyond.
Walmesley's dream of a replica of the grotto at Lourdes was
not realised until 1914. The Belton family had been the donors
for the crucifixion chapel when the church was built. But
in 1912 the same family gave £300 for the chapel and it was
used to erect a shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes in the crucifixion
chapel. NHJ Westlake, a prominent artist of the time, was
commissioned to decorate the chapel and under his supervision
a small replica of the grotto was erected. The work was completed
in time for the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, 1914. Walmesley's
dream had at last been realised.
Now that this chapel has been restored we can see the beauty
of Westlake's work which has been hidden beneath layers of
dirt and grime. Smoke and wax from candles tell the tale of
all the years that this chapel has served as a place of prayer
and devotion. Today the smoke and wax have gone but we should
remember that they speak of the important place this chapel
has held in the hearts of so many people down the years. Could
we ever even begin to number the prayers that have been said
there: prayers said during times of war and times of peace,
prayers for the living and the dead, of petition and of thanksgiving?
We hope and pray that the Lourdes chapel and indeed the whole
of the Priory Church will long continue to be a place of prayer.
This was what it was built for and this was Walmesley's dream.
