A carefully-designed and little-altered Gothic Revival church by Peter Paul Pugin, in a town with associations with two Catholic martyrs. The church contains good quality stone carving by Wall of Cheltenham, a sculpture of St Ethelbert by William Storr-Barber, a memorial plaque by Eric Gill and stained glass by the Hardman firm. The church uses its constricted site to advantage and makes a positive contribution to the local conservation area.

Leominster was a recusant centre during penal times, and is associated with two Catholic martyrs: it was the birthplace of Nicholas Wheeler (Woodfen), a priest executed at Tyburn in 1586, and was the place of execution (in 1610) of the Herefordshire priest Roger Cadwallador (both men were beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987). The persistence of Catholic practice was demonstrated again in 1687, when the Franciscans built a house and chapel in the town. This was during the brief period of Catholic tolerance during the reign of James II; the chapel was demolished a year later during the ‘Glorious Revolution’.

The modern history of the parish started in 1868, when a disused Congregational chapel in Burgess Street was acquired for Catholic use and dedicated to St Ethelbert, King and Martyr. It was purchased by Mrs Louise Herbert, the Catholic wife of a solicitor and former mayor of Leominster; she was from the notable Berington recusant family. She also made available a family property in Barons Cross Road to serve as a presbytery (an arrangement which continued up to the early 1960s) and was the principal donor of the present church in The Bargates. Also dedicated to St Ethelbert, this was built by the Rev. Athanasius Rogers, who served as mission/parish priest from 1884 to 1915. In the absence of the bishop, the foundation stone was laid by the Cathedral Prior of St Michael’s, Hereford (Belmont Abbey) on 6 September 1887. The architect was Peter Paul Pugin of Pugin & Pugin, the contractor Messrs J. Jones & Sons of Smedley, and the estimated cost £1300. The completed church opened for worship on Palm Sunday, 1888, with the grand opening by Bishop Hedley following on Whit Monday, 22 May.

The church has been relatively little altered since it was built. The principal changes have involved additional furnishings and post-Vatican II reordering, both described in the list entry and below. A house next door to the church was acquired to serve as a presbytery in the early 1960s, and in 1994 a small meeting room was built behind the church.

Description

The church is orientated roughly north-south, but this description follows conventional liturgical orientation, assuming the altar is located to the east.

The building was listed relatively recently, in 2009, and the list entry is more detailed than most (see below). Repetition is unnecessary, and this description is limited to additional information and one correction.

• The roof of the timber framed porch is covered with oak shingles, not slate
• The tracery of the east window is said to be modelled on that at St Ethelbert’s church, Lyminge, Kent. The stained glass here is a memorial to Louise Agnes Herbert, donor; artist/maker not identified
• The four carved stone heraldic shields below the west window commemorate Fr Rogers (cross and A.R. monogram), the arms of Pope Leo XIII and Bishop Hedley, and Mrs Herbert (floriated cross and initials L.A.H.)
• There are three two-light stained glass windows in the Lady/Cadwallador Chapel: to the east (The Annunciation, in memory of Nigel Fowler Wright, by Hardman & Co., 1988) and south (to Bl. Roger Cadwallador, 1976, by Patrick Feeney of Hardman & Co., and to Bl. Nicholas Wheeler, in memory of the Norman Charles Reeves, scholar and author of the parish history, d. 2001, signed W & B).
• William Storr-Barber, responsible for the stone statue of St Ethelbert in the niche on the west front, is a Leominster sculptor who carved several First World War memorials
• The only memorial in the church (other than those introduced from elsewhere) is a marble tablet in the nave to A. C. Amsler, ‘musician and linguist’, d.1918
• The Eric Gill memorial in the Lady Chapel is to Richard and Geoffrey Snead-Cox, both killed early in the Great War. This and other items (including a pipe organ) were brought to St Ethelbert’s from the Snead-Cox family chapel at Broxwood (1863, Charles Hansom, listed Grade II), which was closed in 1987 and has now been converted to residential use.