Immaculate Heart of Mary

Introduction

The present Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Great Missenden reached completion in 1964 and received a blessing in July 1964. Consecration of the church followed in June 2007. July 1954 saw the new Parish of Great Missenden begin at The Old Surgery, bought by the Dutch Province of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts and renamed Damien House after the order's missionary leper priest. In 2009 the diocesan bishop was asked to approve a return of devotion under the title Our Lady of Missenden.

History

The parish links its origins and its patronage to the twelfth century and to an early Augustinian monastery in southern England. Mass in Great Missenden goes back as far as the First World War, and from 1938 the place lay within the parish of Princes Risborough. A small building in London Road, Wendover entered the parish canonically in 1958. Parish care passed to diocesan priests, one of them briefly and another from about 1996 until a death in 2013.

Intercession was sought for the first time since the Reformation under the ancient name Our Lady of Missenden. In 2017 Immaculate Heart of Mary lost its resident priest and was joined with Saint Columba's in Chesham.

Architecture and furnishings

Considerable building work at the church produced a new Blessed Sacrament Chapel. An extension of the Immaculate Heart of Mary church was marked one year before the parish jubilee in 2004. In October 2014 a new mensa-stone for the altar in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel was consecrated as a memorial, the marble having been given by Saint Mary's College, Oscott.

Parish life

WorkAid, Bega Kwa Bega, the SSCC Mission in Mozambique and Friends of the Belarusian Children's Hospice UK receive yearly support from the parish. The Sacred Hearts Fathers' parish in Acton, together with their mission in Mozambique, continues to receive parish support.

Enquiries about a vocation to the diaconate or the sacred priesthood are directed to the parish priest. Questions on a vocation to religious or consecrated life, as a brother, sister, monk or nun, are taken to the parish priest.