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/94
Title	Highbury, St Joan of Arc
Level	Series
Description	The first Mass celebrated in Highbury was in 1918 in the Carmelite Chapel, Highbury Park. Soon local Catholics were coming to the Convent for Sunday Mass and by 1920, a temporary church seating 140 parishioners was built on the site of the Community Centre in Kelross Road. It was formally opened by Archbishop Bourne in 1920 and is thought to be the first church in the world dedicated to St Joan of Arc, who had been canonised a few months previously. This ‘temporary’ church was used for the next 40 years, although it was necessary to expand it within 5 years to accommodate an extra 100 people. There was a huge influx of Catholics to the area during the 1940s and 50s, many of them Irish and Italian immigrants. Plans for a new church and school on the site of the original Carmelite chapel were finally accepted in 1959. In October 1960, construction of the new church began, and Cardinal Godfrey laid the foundation stone on St Joan of Arc’s feast day on 30 May 1961. The solemn opening was celebrated with High Mass on 23rd September 1962. The church, designed by architect Stanley Kerr Bate, was built to seat 750 and to convey lightness and space, the long, narrow shape of the plot dictating its unusual proportions. The statue of St Joan of Arc located by the steps down into the nave was commissioned from renowned sculptor Arthur Fleishmann. He used the then new translucent material, Perspex, to convey St Joan in armour that shines in daylight and glows when illuminated from within. It was to be another 40 years before the church was finally consecrated. In commemoration of this, a new altar and tabernacle pedestal were designed by parishioner Ned Campbell and the church was redecorated. The Mass for the Consecration was celebrated on 14 June 2001, by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O‘Connor. On 23 September 2012, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, presided over the parish celebration of the church's golden jubilee of the present church.

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