Our Lady of Sorrows

Introduction

Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Bognor Regis was built in 1881 by J S Hansom in Early English Gothic style, with additions of 1955-7 by W C Mangan.

History

The foundation stone of the church and priory was laid on 26 October 1881. The church was solemnly blessed and opened on 16 August 1882.

Only five bays of the nave were completed; the proposed transepts, Lady Chapel and sanctuary were not begun. In 1939 W C Mangan of Preston was commissioned to complete the building, but work did not begin until the mid-1950s due to the war.

The church was consecrated on 11 May 1965. In 1985 the sanctuary of the church was reordered by Ormsby of Scarisbrick. Hansom's Servite monastery building alongside the church was demolished in the early 1980s and replaced by an apartment block. The Servites withdrew from Bognor Regis in 1994. In 1994 the Servite Friars handed the parish over to the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton after 113 years of service.

Architecture and furnishings

Hansom's church is built of white brick with dressings of Westwood stone from Corsham in Wiltshire; Mangan's additions are of yellow brick with Bath stone dressings. The main body of the church is a wide and tall aisleless nave with three full-height shallow projections on each side. The principal façade is the west front facing Clarence Road, with a massive rose window in plate tracery above a projecting gabled porch. The interior has a tall pointed roof, boarded and panelled, with principal rafters brought down onto wall shafts between the bays of the clerestory.

The western bay is filled by a timber organ gallery installed in 1922, enclosed beneath in the 1980s to form a vestibule. The raised level of the sanctuary was brought forward into the eastern bay of the nave as part of a reordering in 1985. The altars in the side chapels (St Joseph and St Philip Bonizi on the north side and St Teresa of Lisieux on the south side) and the reredos on the high altar survive from the original church and were probably designed by J S Hansom. The reredos was re-set by Mangan and separated from the original high altar, which does not appear to survive.

The sanctuary furnishings and the stone font probably date from the 1980s. The parish holds an annual Tagalog Mass for the local Filipino community.

Parish life

Connect Groups meet across Bognor and the surrounding villages in each other's homes to socialise, discuss scripture and church teaching, and pray together. The parish has an ethnic chaplaincy to the Polish community, in place since 2006.

The parish has a parish primary school, St Mary's, and with other parishes in the area founded St Philip Howard High School, Barnham. The parish runs Alpha throughout the year, and hundreds within the parish have done the course.

The parish has a Parish Finance Committee that provides oversight of all the parish's money. The parish has a Leadership Team, led by the Parish Priest, that discerns the vision for the parish and decides on the strategy for its implementation. The parish has a monthly discussion group with a different speaker each month.