| Description | The Bow Common Mission was founded by Cardinal Manning to serve Irish Catholic dock workers and their families living in Poplar, East London. From 1891 a temporary chapel existed at 187-189 Devons Road, served from Our Lady and St Catherine of Siena, Bow. A new church of The Holy Name and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was founded in Bow Common by Fr Gordon Thompson, a former Anglican clergyman, in 1892. The foundation stone was blessed by Cardinal Vaughan on 26 July 1893 and the completed church was consecrated on 30 June 1984. The architect was Frederick Arthur Walters (1849-1931) and Messrs Gregory & Co of Clapham Junction were the contractors. The benefactors were William and Susan Lyall, and there are plaques commemorating both the Lyalls and Fr Gordon Thompson on the east and west walls of the chapel.
The red brick church was built in the Gothic style, with a hammer beam roof, together with a school and a presbytery, which stood at the corner of Bow Common Lane and St Pauls Way, directly in front of the church’s blind east end. In 1942, a bomb hit a gas main in the road outside the church, destroying the presbytery, the primary school, and the sanctuary and roof of the church. The church remained in a derelict state until it was restored in 1957-58 by David Stokes FRIBA & Partners and a new presbytery and sacristies were built. The church was roofed with a shallow-pitch aluminium roof (one of the first applications of this material) as the walls could no longer support a heavy slate roof such as the original roof. The east and west gables were altered in order to fit a shallower roof and the east bell cote was removed. The former spire was replaced by a thin aluminium spire, which has since become a landmark. Stokes designed new furnishings, such as a new high altar of white marble with an aluminium baldacchino, and a holy water stoup of Cornish granite. Several new furnishings of stainless steel, such as the nave altar and the baptistery cross, came from the Sisters of Sion convent, Notting Hill c2000. Of the pre-war furnishings the nineteenth-century tabernacle survived, as well as the font and four statues in niches set into the internal walls near the chancel arch. The school was not replaced and most of the children in the parish attended Our Lady Immaculate at Limehouse or other Catholic schools in the area. A new presbytery was built roughly on the site of the former school, while the site of the former presbytery was turned into a small garden with a Lourdes grotto.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the parish was served by the Franciscans, but responsibility passed back to the Diocese in 1983 following the death of the parish priest, Fr Leonard Magro OFM. Bishop Victor Guazzelli then based his Eastern Area Office in the large presbytery at Bow Common, whilst the parish istelf was served either from Poplar or from Limehouse. The future of the parish became increasingly uncertain as new waves of migrants moved into the area and the Catholic population declined. Today the church is home to the Vietnamese Chaplaincy, with the parish priest again occupying the presbytery. The Lady Chapel, originally the Calvary chapel, is now dedicated to our Lady of La Vang and has a Vietnamese statue. The church also serves as a chapel of ease to the parish of Poplar. |