Our Lady and St Thomas

Introduction

The mission in Willington was founded in 1877 when the first resident priest, Belgium Aloysius Hosten, arrived in the village.

History

The church was designed by Kelly & Dickie of London and the general contractor was James Hopper of Wolsingham. The sanctuary murals were added in c1912 by the Belgian artist Louis Beyaert who has signed and dated the central lower scene. The 1904 Harrison & Harrison organ was donated to the church in 2000. The church could accommodate a congregation of 350 and the cost was variously reported as £4,500 or £5,000.

The wooden high altar was replaced by a tabernacle plinth, with a new forward altar in front, both of stone. The oak altar rails given by the parish in 1924 were cut back leaving a short section either side of the sanctuary. The pulpit was reduced in size to serve as an ambo and a confessional provided the materials for a presidential chair.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of rock-faced local stone with ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roofs. The church has a nave and transepts with a two span roof, and a sanctuary in the form of a three-sided apse. The north transept houses the Harrison & Harrison organ (1904). The sanctuary apse contains three pointed-arch recesses, each housing a pair of paintings on canvas by Louis Beyaert showing Types and Ante-types.

The benches are the Belgium-made originals with tip up kneeling boards and sides decorated with quatrefoils and trefoils. The original free-standing pulpit remains, as do two pieces of the cut down original Gothic altar rail. The east end has a three-sided apse with paired blind lancets and a pyramidal roof, and the east gable rises above with a quatrefoil to the apex and a cross finial. A single-storey vestry with a pitched roof has been added to the rear of the south transept.

The three-bay nave and the transepts have round-headed windows with Gothic tracery and hood moulds alternating with stepped buttresses, with a continuous sill band and a chamfered plinth. The central bay of the north wall is partly infilled by a stone, lean-to structure with a quatrefoil motif and a stone slate roof, representing the remains of the un-built baptistery. The west end has an off-centre pointed arched entrance of two orders with a tympanum carved with a cinquefoil. All windows have original leaded glass.

The sanctuary apse has a timber, boarded semi-dome and is defined by a plaster pointed-arch. The paintings include The Crucifixion of Jesus/Abraham is prevented from killing Isaac, his son, signed by the artist and dated 1912. To either side of the apse there is a tall, pointed-arch recess with that to the right flanked by a pair of shoulder-arched entrances giving entry to the vestry behind. There are double transepts to either side of the sanctuary defined by a short timber arcade with timber openwork to the spandrels, supported on a single, slender cast-iron fluted column.

The nave has a high, keeled wooden roof divided into compartments by timber ribs, the compartments lined with pitch pine boards. The site of the intended, but un-built baptistery can be seen in the northwest corner as a pointed-arch recess. Beneath the triple west windows there is a single-storey, flat-roofed, mid-20th-century narthex created by extending the west entrance into the nave.

Visiting

The church is situated on the east side of a lane leading from the main road through Willington, with a large churchyard to its north. The church has a slender turret of four stages with a slated pyramidal roof attached to the southwest corner of the south transept. The church has three stepped windows at the west end with pointed-arch heads and tracery similar to the transept windows, with a louvered quatrefoil to the apex and a cross finial to the gable head.