| Description | The church of Pius X, St Charles Square, is built on the site of the former St Charles’s College. The College was originally founded in 1863 by Henry Manning (then Superior of the Oblates of St Charles) to provide an education for Catholic boys from well-to-do families.The College moved from its original quarters into newly-built premises in St Charles’s Square in 1874 and remained there until the College closed in 1903. In 1905, the buildings were taken over by nuns of the Sacred Heart who ran it as St Charles’s Teacher Training College, a successor of a teacher training college which they had founded in Roehampton in 1874. In 1908, a College Chapel, dedicated to St Madeleine Sophie Barat the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, was built and the first Mass celebrated there on 25th May.
In 1938, Cardinal Hinsley asked Fr Leonard George Fletcher to open a new parish in North Kensington. Initially a prefabricated building served as the parish church, standing close to where the Catholic Children's Society building now stands, but on 3rd September 1939 (the start of the Second World War) St Charles's College Chapel became the parish church, known as the church of St Madeleine Sophie Barat, St Quintin's Park. This was to become the nucleus for the present St Charles' Square parish. During the war, North Kensington was badly bombed and the College buildings suffered severe damage. St Charles's Teacher Training College itself had been evacuated to Cold Ash, Berkshire at the beginning of the War, but it was never to return to its former home in St Charles Square. Instead, in 1946, the College moved back to Roehampton where it now forms a constituent part of Roehampton University and the St Charles Square site was sold to the Diocese of Westminster.
In November 1948, Fr John Francis Hathway succeeded Fr Fletcher as parish priest of St Quintin's Park. As the College buildings had been so badly damaged during the War, Fr Hathway at first used a small hut as a church and began raising funds for a new building. It was eventually decided to restore the Chapel of the old St Charles' College as the parish church, but to dedicate it instead to St Pius X (St Madeleine Sophie Barat, however, is still commemorated in one of the stained glass windows in the church). From this time onwards, the parish became known as St Charles Square rather than St Quintin's Park. Fr Hathway saw the opening of the church in 1955, when Cardinal Griffin formally dedicated it to St Pius X. Having purchased the former College buildings, the Diocese of Westminster built two Catholic secondary schools on the site, the Cardinal Manning School for Boys (opened 1954–55) and the Sion-Manning Girls’ School (opened 1957). The parish primary school was also rebuilt and re-opened in 1957. Fr Hathway was involved in all these building projects, and also ministered to patients in nearby St Charles' Hospital. After retirement in 1979, he continued to live in St Charles' Square and acted as chaplain to the Carmelite monastery.
In 1981, D. Plummer prepared proposals for alterations, including an unexecuted plan to shorten the nave. At that time, the sacristy in the angle of the south transept had been converted to ‘more general parish use’ and the two rooms above the porch were used as vestries. In 1987–88, TCK Properties Ltd extended the presbytery and repaired and refurbished the church. Today, on the site of the former college stands St Charles Sixth Form College, Sion Manning School, St Charles Primary School, The Catholic Children's Society, Pius X Community Centre and St Pius X Church. |