Record

Repository	Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster
Ref No	AAW/DOW/PAR/231
Title	Whitton, St Edmund of Canterbury
Level	Series
Description	The parish of Whitton was founded in 1934 by the Society of St Edmund, an American missionary order originally founded in the 1840s at Pontigny, France, the site of St Edmund's burial. As Whitton developed during the interwar period, the first provision for Catholic worship was at a house called The Retreat, 213 Nelson Road, where an outbuilding was used to celebrate the first public Mass on 23 September 1934. A small brick church was built in 1935, followed by a school. The church was destroyed by a bomb in 1940 but promptly rebuilt, opening on 6 July 1941. This building eventually became the church hall when a new church was designed and built by Francis Xavier Velarde (1897–1960), an architect based in Liverpool, who was responsible for a number of particularly notable Catholic churches between the wars and in the 1950s. After Velarde's death in December 1960, the project was carried forward for the F.X. Velarde Partnership by Richard O’Mahony. The foundation stone was laid on 19 May 1962 and the building opened in 15 June the following year, with seating for about 475 people. It was consecrated on 19 September 1972. The parish continued to be served by the Edmundites until 1988 when they returned to the USA.

Album amicorum of George Strachan

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