History of our churches

Our Lady & St. Guthlac, Deepings

• Charles Waterton was born on 3rd June 1782 and died in 1865.  He was the 27th Earl of Walton Hall, which is located near Wakefield in Yorkshire.  His family had survived the Wars of the Roses but were deprived of most of their property during the Reformation because they remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church.  He claimed descent from Saint Thomas More, through his grandmother. He travelled extensively in South America, observing and collecting specimens of natural history and was an authority on the flora and fauna of that country.  He perfected a unique method of taxidermy and his large collection of stuffed animals is preserved at Stonyhurst, the Jesuit College where he was educated.

• In 1829, he married Anne Edmonstone, whose mother was the granddaughter of an Indian Chief and who was descended on her father’s side from Robert I and Robert II of Scotland, and also Lady Godiva.  Anne died in 1830, three weeks after giving birth to Edmund Waterton.

Edmund Waterton was perhaps, the first ‘conservationist’ in this country.  He turned the grounds of Walton Hall into a bird sanctuary and a safe habitat for wildlife.  He was a Knight of the Sacred Order of Christ; Knight of St. John; Papal Privy Chamberlain to Pope Pius IX.

He also travelled extensively but collected religious artefacts, some of which are in the British Museum.  Still in place in the present Catholic Church in Deeping, is a stone font and a wooden crucifix thought to be brought from France and dated about 1500AD.  The statue is from Boulogne Cathedral.

In 1876, Edmund sold Walton Hall and then bought Deeping Manor slightly later in 1879.  The Manor stood on the land between Bell Lane and Hereward Way, Deeping St. James.  In 1880, on land to the east of Church Lane, behind Hereward Way, he converted a stable into a church, and this church was used by his family and the small Catholic community until December 1968, when this new church on Hereward Way was completed.

In 1862, he married, and his wife Josephine, bore him six children. She died in Cannes, France in 1879 and her body was brought back to England to be interred in this chapel. Edmund was interred beside her when he died in 1887.  As this Catholic community grew, permission was granted by the Home Office in the late 1950s, to re-inter their bodies below ground, which afforded more space in the church.

In 1891, Edmund’s eldest son sold the Manor House to the Marquess of Exeter but the church remained the property of the Waterton family and continued to be used by the Catholic community.

Xaverian Brothers

In 1919, the Manor House was rented to the teaching order of Xaverian Brothers as a novitiate.  They brought it in 1932 and in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, their boys’ preparatory school at Foxhunt Manor in Sussex was evacuated to the Deeping Manor. In 1945, after a serious fire, the school was moved back to Sussex and the Manor House reverted to a novitiate.

In 1952, it was bought by a local businessman.  The land on which it stood, extended from Manor Way to the west, Broadgate Lane to the north, Church Street, Deeping St. James to the south and Hereward Way to the east.  It was agreed that some of the land should be reserved for a new and bigger Catholic Church, to be built at a later date.

The Brothers’ used to be remembered by some of the older residents of Deepings, for their concern for the welfare of the people during the years of economic depression in the 1930s.  The priests who ministered to the Brothers also ministered to the Catholic community and when the Brothers left, the church was left without a permanent priest and without vestments, altar linen and the artefacts necessary for church services.  To deal with this situation, missionary priests came and the Altar Society was founded.

Altar Society

The community was served by priests of the African Missions from Ireland, and then by priests of the travelling mission in England.  The Altar Society was formed by a very small group of women in 1953.  Their task was to care for the Church, to provide the necessary vestments etc., to raise money to support the priest, to provide his food and lodging and to care for him.  They were helped in this task by many of their non-Catholic friends and relations.

In January 1957, Father Jordan was appointed Parish Priest by the Bishop of Nottingham and the Catholics of the Deepings became a Parish.

Sacred Heart Fathers

The Sacred Heart Fathers are a Missionary Society and Fr Jordan was the first one to serve the parish of Deeping St. James.  He was followed by Fr Jones in 1961; Fr Durkin in 1964; Fr Peppard in 1970; and Fr O’Sullivan in 1978.

In 1964, the Manor Park Estate was well under way in development and a site was allocated for the Catholic Church.  It had to be built whilst the estate was under construction and so this enormous task was undertaken by Fr. Durkin and his parishioners.  The church was completed in December 1968 and the first service to be held there was the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1968.  Sadly the ‘Waterton Chapel’ had to be abandoned and it was many years before the, now scattered, Waterton descendants could be traced.  Eventually permission was given for the remains of their ancestors and those of the family retainers, who were buried in the grounds to be placed to rest in the cemetery of the parish Church of Deeping St. James.  This re-internment took place in June 1988, in the presence of two direct descendants of Edmund Waterton.  The chapel and the land were then sold.

Fr O’Sullivan died while still serving as parish priest in 1984.  By that time the parish was a mission field no longer and the Sacred Heart Fathers felt that their missionary vocation was no longer needed.

In 1984, the Bishop of Nottingham appointed his diocesan priest, Fr O’Hanlon to the parish until he was replaced in 1990 by Fr Hugh Doherty. In April 1996, Fr Pat O’Doherty became the parish priest replacing Fr Hugh who was moved to North Derbyshire. In 2004 he retired and Fr Brendan O’Sullivan was appointed to the parish. When ill health forced him to take a step back Fr Clement Orang’o from Kenya arrived. In 2015 he was moved to Syston Parish in Leicester and Fr Victor Dakwan from Nigeria took over as parish priest. In 2019 he was seconded to serve as Chaplain in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, and Fr Paul Lloyd joined the parish in January 2019 just before the Covid pandemic struck. Fr Paul remains the parish priest of Bourne and Deepings to this day.

Sacred Heart &St Gilbert’s, Bourne

• In 1911, Mary Ann Duffy, born at Montrose, Scotland, moved to Bourne, and married a non-Catholic, Mr W H Scotney. She became the only Catholic in the town but there was no priest, no church and their two children, Bernard and Oliver,  were baptised into the faith at Spalding. By the 1920s, the number had increased to ten worshippers and Mass was being said at one of their homes in Albion Terrace, a row of small cottages in North Street, Bourne. The meetings later moved to a studio at the rear of a newspaper shop at No 13 West Street but this became too small and the congregation then rented the long room at the Angel Hotel. Services lapsed for two years because there was no visiting priest and a hired bus was subsequently arranged to take worshippers to the Church of Our Lady at Mount Carmel at Corby Glen. 

• Services then began in the chapel at the Ministry of Labours Instructional Centre off West Road and afterwards in the social room of the Co-operative Society premises at No 17 North Street, rented for 2s. 6d. a week (12½p) with services being conducted by Fr James Power who travelled over by taxi every Sunday from Deeping St James, where he had recently been appointed chaplain, at a cost of 2s. 6d which included waiting time.