St Anne

Introduction

Flanking the first bay of the chancel are chapels dedicated to Our Lady and to Saint Anne.

History

The parish was founded in 1850. In 1848 Father William Young began using school buildings on Sundays for Mass. On 19 November 1850 Father Quiblier gave official notification of his intention to open a chapel under the name of Saint Anne's in Spicer Street. The first Marist Fathers arrived in September 1850, and within a few months a community of six priests was established.

In October 1850 land at the south-west corner of Underwood Street and Albert Street was purchased from John Cookson and his mortgagees. The nave was completed in 1855, and the first Mass was said on 12 September 1855. The church was completed in 1894 to a reduced plan, omitting the transept and steeple. The marble altar was added in 1901.

The altar rails were erected in 1935 and the marble pulpit in 1939. The church hall, standing to the south of the church, was built from designs by Gilbert Blount; tenders were invited in April 1858 and that of a builder named Kelly for £1,130 was accepted. The parish hosts a Brazilian Chaplaincy led by a priest.

Architecture and furnishings

The church is built of Kentish ragstone and ashlar dressings with a slated roof, in the thirteenth-century style. The church consists of an aisled nave six bays long and a chancel of two bays with a three-sided apse. The northernmost bay of the nave is occupied by a vaulted lobby, above which is an organ loft. A porch projecting from the second bay of the west aisle has been converted into a chapel.

The nave arcades are supported on clustered columns with carved foliage caps and angel stops. The open timber roof has arched, collar-braced trusses springing from corbels adorned with angels playing musical instruments. The altar is an imposing structure of white marble with an arcaded and pinnacled reredos. The paired lancet windows in the clerestory are set behind coupled arches with hood-mouldings having carved human heads as stops, and are flanked by shafts with foliage caps.

Over the aisles are penthouse roofs having timber arches against each pier, and the aisle windows are paired lancets treated as in the clerestory, with openings to confessionals forming triple arcades below. A high arch opens into the chancel, which has a vaulted roof enriched with stencilled decoration; the first bay is open to the side chapels, and there is a doorway to a sacristy on the east side. The roofs of the two side chapels are vaulted, but in a curiously awkward manner.