The Immaculate Conception and St Joseph, Hertford

Introduction

The Immaculate Conception and St Joseph in Hertford, within the Archdiocese of Westminster, was consecrated on 16 October 1866 by Cardinal Manning. The church is built in thirteenth-century Gothic style with French influence.

History

Mass began to be said again in Hertford in 1848, with priests from St Edmund's College saying Mass in a room of the Bull Inn. The foundation stone was laid by Cardinal Wiseman on 18 October 1858 and he opened the Church on 16 June 1859. The present church was built between 1859 and 1861 at the instruction of Herbert Vaughan, to the designs of architect Henry Clutton. The builders at Hertford were the local firm of Ekins.

A major restoration and re-decoration of the church began in 1994, loosely based on the original designs. The site for St Joseph's Church lies to the south of the historic site of St Mary's Priory, founded by Ralph de Limesi, a knight of William I, and dissolved in 1536.

Architecture and furnishings

The interior has a 4-bay nave with shallow west gallery, octagonal chamfered columns, and open rafter roof. The sanctuary floor is raised 4 steps above the nave and has a roof with moulded and gilded ribs, with original decorative scheme of gold stars on a blue ground restored 1995. The church contains late nineteenth-century stained glass by Ion Pace of Clayton and Bell in lancet windows. The church has a red veined marble altar with colonnettes and plain reredos, reconstructed from panels of the elaborate high altar and reredos dismantled in the early 1970s.

The stone pulpit is in memoriam Jacob Montague Mason, 1892, raised on 6 shafts with bell caps and roll bases. A side altar is in memory of Patrick and Mary Roland, with carved Pieta frontal panel and traceried canopied reredos with figure of St Joseph. The font has 8 sandstone colonnettes and an octagonal basin with incised quatrefoils.

The base of the rood cross holds a relic of the True Cross. The rood beam has coats of arms of Pius IX and John Paul II.

The church has a rose window above the east end with stained glass showing the Virgin Mary and Angels. The church has a fleche with a tile-hung square base, set diagonally, with lead roll lattice-patterned covering to spire, above a bell-cote with 4 arched openings and corner pinnacles.

The church has a slate plaque on an external buttress commemorating the Priory and the present church and their respective founders. The church is built of flint with yellow brick bands and quoins, stone dressings, a clay tiled roof, and a polygonal hipped east end. The church has a hall plan with a four-bay nave, short polygonal sanctuary, north aisle, and a lean-to entry porch at the west end with a south door. The principal south elevation has a door at left beneath a pointed arch with dripmould supported on colonnettes, and four widely spaced simple lancet windows in plain chamfered reveals with stone quoins.

A projecting buttress marks the division between nave and sanctuary, with stone quoins, offsets, and a cap supported on small foliated brackets. The polygonal sanctuary has one lancet window in each face. The north aisle is roofed separately and has a flint-faced east gable with yellow brick bands and stone-coped parapet, and a rose window with traceried inner circle and five outer segments. The west end has twin stone-coped gables, with lancet windows with circles above.

The sanctuary arch is chamfered and raised on chamfered corbelled colonnettes with carved foliated volute caps. Externally the church appears to follow the local pattern of a simple flint box with brick dressings and stone window surrounds, and is redolent of the slightly smaller Norman church at Bengeo. A Millennium project funded by parishioners saw a new porch and cloister built in traditional style with flint, stone dressings, green oak, and pegged tiles to match the church, formally opened in 2002 by the Marquis De Limesi.

The gilt openwork wooden spire on the Tabernacle is modern, as is the carved Holy Spirit at the apex of the vault, the work of Michael Fisher of Chelsford. Most of the stained glass windows in the aisle are by Nathaniel Westlake (1833–1921), all richly painted with figures placed in elaborate architectural surrounds.

Parish life

The parish runs groups for prayer, social action, Sacramental preparation, youth work and the support of others. Between Christmas and Candlemas the Crib contains models of historic buildings in Hertford and almost a hundred figures of animals and people.

Notable people and events

Henry Clutton, the architect, had been a partner of William Burges, with whom he won the Lille Cathedral Competition in 1853. The architect Bentley, who was to build Westminster Cathedral, was a pupil in Clutton's office. The church was built on land reputed to have belonged to King Harold, which passed to Ralph de Limesi, who gave it as a foundation for a Benedictine priory dedicated to Our Lady.

Visiting

Boards on the end walls at the back of the church list the Priors of St Mary’s Priory from its foundation until the Dissolution, and the Parish Priests since 1848.