Record

AAW - Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster
- DOW - Diocese of Westminster
  - PAR - Parishes

Repository	Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster
Ref No	AAW/DOW/PAR/131
Title	Mile End, The Guardian Angels
Level	Series
Description	The church of Guardian Angels, Mile End, - formerly the Salem Chapel used by Congregationalists - was opened on 8th December 1868, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, by Archbishop Henry Manning. As the local Catholic population grew and the church building became more delapidated, it became necessary to build a new one. Funding for the new church was provided by Lady Mary Howard, the younger sister of the Duke of Norfolk. Frederick A Walters, also responsible for the church of St Anselm and St Cecilia in Kingsway, and the Benedictine Ealing Abbey, was the architect commissioned to design the new Guardian Angels, which he chose to do in the perpendicular Gothic style. The new church was opened on the Feast of the Annunciation, Wednesday 25th March 1903. by the Bishop of Nottingham, Robert Brindle, a former auxiliary bishop in Westminster. The church was finally consecrated on 5 October 1927, and a new organ installed above the Lady Chapel was blessed by Archbishop Goodier in March 1931. In March 1932, F. A. Walters & Son designed a Sacred Heart altar for the church. An immersion font and large nave altar date from a reordering in the 1980s by Mattia del Prete with the architect Antonio Incognito of Rome. The church is home to a number of communities of the Neo-Catechumenate Way Archbishop Manning’s successor, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan established the Catholic Social Union to run clubs and settlements in poor parts of London in order to combat the growing social divide between the poorer East End of London and the wealthier West End. As part of this endeavour, Lady Margaret Howard was tasked by the Cardinal to start a settlement in “the most unpromising portion of his diocese” namely Mile End. In February 1894, Lady Margaret took a house in Tredegar Square together with her friend Lady Clare Feilding and two other women – Emma Lowe and Clementine Annesley – who were converts from Anglicanism, and who had previously obtained considerable experience as members of an Anglican Sisterhood working in the slums around Kilburn. The settlement in Tredeger Square was named St Philip’s House, with volunteers visiting parishioners in Mile End, and running activities such as a girls’ club and mothers’ meetings. The settlement movement had started several years earlier with Toynbee Hall in 1884, and many others had subsequently been established in the East End, but St Philip's House was the first Catholic settlement. As well as funding the building of the new church, Lady Margaret also lent £6,000 to enable a school to be opened in 1896. When she died in 1899, Lady Margaret gifted the money she had lent for both the church and the school to the parish.

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