Our Lady of Compassion - a brief history
Our church in Saffron Walden was established in 1906, then as part of the Archdiocese of Westminster. Five years earlier Charles Rose Chase (picture left), an Anglican clergyman, had been received into the Catholic Church and ordained a Catholic priest. He founded the Catholic Missionary Society at Willesden, and in 1905 came with priests from that Society to set up a base in Saffron Walden. In 1906 he bought the house at the corner of the High Street and Castle Street, known as The Close, a mid-15th century house with its own colourful history; at that time it was a much more substantial building than it is today. The history of our church's building is inextricably linked with that of The Close. Services were initially celebrated in the room of the house known as the Old Baronial Hall, but the new growing congregation quickly required more space. The mid-16th century barn of The Close, which had been used as a stable (and may originally have been a tithe barn for the nearby parish church of St Mary), was converted into the present church with funds provided by Father Chase and by the Missionary Society. It opened for worship on 13 September 1906. Until then the nearest Catholic churches had been in Bishop's Stortford and Cambridge. Father Charles' interest in the area arose from the fact that he had been received into the Church by the Redemptorist Fathers at Bishop's Stortford.
Father Charles continued his close connection with the new parish, giving the church to the Archdiocese of Westminster. He remained at The Close until he died in 1908. His property then passed to a trust that was partly private in its scope and partly for the benefit of the Missionary Society. In 1909, The Sisters of Jesus and Mary (the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, to give them their official name) had a house in Willesden, where Father Chase's Westminster Diocesan Missionaries had their headquarters. It was at the request of the Diocesan Missionaries that the Sisters came to Saffron Walden, arriving in August 1909 and going on to establish their convent school in The Close. On the arrival of the Sisters, Father Chase's Missionaries vacated The Close. It is thought that until 1913 they lived in rented accommodation, before the parish purchased a house for them opposite the church at 27 Castle Street. By 1917, The Sisters (there were eleven in the community in Saffron Walden) needed to find a larger house for their growing school and at the end of September 1917 they left The Close and Saffron Walden, moving to Thornton Hall in Buckinghamshire, where the school remains today.
The geography of the parish was extensive, the boundaries of the Mission were 'on the North the County of Essex boundary as far as Wixoe in the East; on the East the road leading from Wixoe to Stambourne crossing the railway below Birdbrook Station. Thence along the main road past Finchingfield to crossroads, then along Thaxted road but not including Thaxted. Along the road to Henham Station, thence by Widdington, Quendon and Berden to the county Boundary; on the South Widdington, Quendon, Berden; on the West the boundary of the County of Essex.' This was a very large area for the Mission to cover, but Father Chase's Missionaries did their best. They could not, of course, just wait in Saffron Walden for people to come to them. They had what one of the Sisters of Jesus and Mary described as a mobile chapel that they took around the parish.
The Missionary Society provided priests to the parish until 1918, when the newly-formed Diocese of Brentwood took over. In 1930 the Spanish Vincentian Fathers took charge. They remained in Saffron Walden until 1948. The red-brick, double-fronted presbytery was built in 1935, on land gifted to the parish, a few years earlier, by the owner of The Close. The house in Castle St was sold. Meanwhile The Close too, had been sold, and an old laundry building in its grounds, which had been used as a parish hall in the days of Father Chase, was later sold by the new owners to become Saffron Walden's Pentecostal church.
Between the conversion of 1906 and the turn of the century, the church building remained fundamentally unchanged, bar internal reordering, modernisation and, in 1963, the addition of a new porch. History turned full circle, in 1999, when the Pentecostalists moved to a larger site and we reacquired their church building which has once again become a much needed parish hall.
During 2004/5 a major restoration of the church was carried out. Significant alterations included the addition of a tower, giving the church much greater townscape prominence, and a cloister, linking the church and presbytery. Internal reordering and improvements also took place with a complete redesign of the sanctuary. The church entrance was moved to be through what was the presbytery garden, making the church fully accessible. The extended and reordered church was consecrated by Bishop Thomas McMahon on 15 September 2006. The parish hall was refurbished in 2025.
Whilst over the years, every effort has been made to retain the original character of this ancient building (a Grade 2 listed barn), it is first and foremost, a vibrant living church, catering for a geographically large parish.
The above brief history is based on material from an article by Beatrice Goldie published in the Newport News (Vol. 15, 1981), Margaret Dornan's booklet A Short History of the Catholic Parish Church of Our Lady of Compassion Saffron Walden (1991) and a much more detailed account of the parish by Charles Goldie published in 2008: Our Lady of Compassion Saffron Walden: The first hundred years.
