Summary
A Roman Catholic Minster Church built between 1898 and 1908, designed by Francis Easto Banham.
Reasons for Designation
The Minster Church of St Benet, Beccles is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
Historic Interest:
* for its association with the revived history of monasticism in England, having originally been intended as a monastery, and its continuous link with the Benedictine order at Downside from the 1880s into the C21;
* as an illustration of the revival of Roman Catholic worship in East Anglia in the late C19;
* as the major work of and for its highly personal connection to the architect Francis Easto Banham who was also the Mayor of the town and who is buried in the churchyard.
Architectural Interest:
* for the ambitious scale of the building;
* for the quality of the materials used;
* for the unusual use of a Romanesque style throughout;
* for the impressive quality of the plaster barrel vaulting skilfully designed to resemble stone internally;
* for the careful individual decorative details to the exterior;
* for the quality of the interior decorative paint schemes, the stained glass, and the late-C20 fittings.
History
England’s many medieval churches had been built for a Roman Catholic mode of worship (the Latin rite). Elizabeth I’s 1559 Act of Uniformity rendered them all part of the Church of England and outlawed the Catholic Mass. The following two centuries imposed upon a diminishing minority of Catholic worshippers in England severe civil inequalities, public suspicion and periods of outright persecution. Aside from a small number of private chapels and foreign embassies, there were very few buildings dedicated to Catholic worship.
The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 permitted the first new generation of Catholic places of worship to be built in England and Wales since the Reformation. They were forbidden to feature bells or steeples and were typically small, classically or domestically detailed, and were often hidden or set back from public view. The 1829 Act of Emancipation removed most remaining inequalities from Catholic worship and was accompanied by a growing architectural confidence. By the 1840s A W N Pugin’s vision of the Gothic revival as a recovery of England’s Catholic medieval inheritance fuelled stylistic debate and inspired new design for both Catholics and wider society. In 1850 Pope Pius X ‘restored’ the role of bishops, cathedrals and dioceses in England, inviting even grander architectural projects.
There was a significant expansion in the numbers of Catholics in England between 1850 (around 700,000), 1911 (around 1.7m) and 1941 (2.7m). This increase was accompanied by the development of a new Catholic parish system in 1908, by the construction of convents, monasteries, schools and social institutions, and by landmark buildings such as Westminster Cathedral (consecrated 1910).
Though the First and Second World Wars had some short-term impacts on the rate of expansion, the boom in schools, new towns, suburbs and housing estates in the 1950s and 60s saw more Catholic churches built in England than at any time since the Reformation. During that period the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) introduced profound reforms to the Catholic church, including architectural changes informed by the Liturgical movement. Key changes include saying the Mass in languages other than Latin, and the reordering of churches to reflect a greater ecumenism and communality of worship.
In 1829 a chapel was built at nearby Bungay, served by the Benedictines from Downside Priory. In 1886 they sought permission from the Bishop of Northampton to set up a new mission in Beccles. In 1889 Catholic convert John George Kenyon of Gillingham Hall promised a lump sum of £500 and an annual sum of £100 to pay for a priest to be installed. The same year he purchased the land for the Minster and presented it to Downside. Dom Edmund Ford OSB of Bungay was appointed as the first priest. The site was intended to be a small monastery, and a priory building for four or five monks was built, with the first mass celebrated in November 1889 in its dining room. This was later to become the presbytery.
In 1898 a chapel was built for John George Kenyon at Gillingham Hall, the architect commissioned was Francis Easto Banham who was a resident and mayor of Beccles, and an obvious choice to be architect for the new Minster church. Banham’s design for the nave was inspired by the priory church of Blyth in Nottinghamshire, and for the tower by the Norman tower at Bury St Edmunds. The foundation stone was laid in 1899 and the first mass was celebrated in the nave on 4 September 1901. Early donors to the church were Frederic and Catherine Smith and Stephen and Margaret Henry (as recorded on plaques sited either side of the west door). It took until 1908 to complete the church including the sanctuary, and even so, the finished building did not include the intended baptistry in the north-west bay, nor the ambulatory and Lady chapel intended for the south-east of the crossing.
In 1953 the presbytery was converted into a primary school, which opened in 1957, and a new presbytery was built to the north-east of the church. New heating and lighting were installed in the church, and a new font was installed, donated by Mrs Gwen Taylor, in memory of her son Squadron Leader John Stuart Taylor who was killed in action in the Second World War.
Following the second Vatican council (1962-65) the sanctuary was rearranged by Dom Francis Little (incumbent from 1965 to 1975). The altar was brought forward to a position under the tower, and a new tabernacle was constructed. In 1979 a new pulpit was installed, designed by the architect Andrew Anderson. The process of rearrangement was completed by Fr Simon Blakesley (incumbent from 1995 to 2003) when a new altar with a platform and surrounding steps were installed, designed by the local retired architect Chris Boyes, reflecting the design of the 1979 pulpit.
Although St Benet’s did not become the monastery that was originally planned, all of the priests from 1888 until the time of writing (2022) were monks from Downside Priory, except for a period between 1993 and 2003 when the priests were provided by the Diocese of East Anglia. The building has continued to hold the title of “Minster”, for its association with Downside.
Details
Building: A Roman Catholic Minster Church.
Date: 1898-1908.
Architect: Francis Easto Banham.
Materials: Ancaster stone with Bath stone dressings, with Bath stone interior and machine-made roof tiles.
Plan: The sanctuary faces south, but liturgical compass points are used throughout this description: that is that the sanctuary is said to be the east end.
The building has a cruciform plan with an apsidal sanctuary and apsidal chapels to the north and south aisles. The square tower sits above the crossing. There is a porch at the south-west corner of the building. The nave is 25m long and 12m wide including the aisles. The length including the crossing and sanctuary is 41m.
EXTERIOR:
The building is designed in a Romanesque style, and on a large scale. It has a gabled roof and a tall, three-storey nave with lower side aisles. The tower is sited at the crossing and rises 25m high, though the effect is slightly squat despite its height because the nave roof rises to about 20m at its apex.
The west front is formed from the gable end, with two square turrets with blind arches to the lower courses and two tiers of arcading below pyramid roofs. Between the towers is a deep, gabled porch with a round-arched entrance with three orders of shafts and mouldings. There are two round-headed windows above the porch and three round-headed niches in the gable head.
There is a gabled south porch with a Celtic cross finial and square corner turrets decorated with three tiers of interlaced arcading. There is a course of round-headed arcading above the door. The round-arched entrance has beakhead (or beast head) decoration.
Both the north and south elevations of the nave have a corbel course under the parapet, and a seven-bay clerestory with round-headed windows and pilasters articulating the bays. Both sides also have a seven-bay aisle with each bay defined by pilasters, and one round-headed window to each bay above a string course, with a single order of shafts. The exception is the western bay of the north aisle which has a blocked arch where the intended baptistry was never built. The design of the aisle windows to both north and south aisles is similar from a distance, but the capitals to each window have an individual design.
The south transept has a blank lower stage, and a row of 10 narrow windows to the upper stage. Above this is an arcade of alternately pointed and round-headed arches: the latter with windows. There is a small round window in the gable head. There is one round-headed and shafted window to the lower stage of the west return and two to the upper stage. The single-storey sacristy extends from the east return. The north transept is similar to the south, except for the lower stage of the north front which has three shafted windows.
There is a square crossing tower with a circular north-east stair turret and pilaster buttresses clasping each corner, with a central buttress to each side. The belfry stage has two recessed panels on each face, each with two tiers of arcading: three arches to the lower tier and a single arch to the upper tier, all with shafts. The tower has a plain parapet.
The apsidal sanctuary is divided into seven bays by flat buttresses and pilasters. There is one round-headed window to the top stage of each bay, and a corbel course under the eaves.
INTERIOR:
The interior is also Romanesque in style. The nave has a high, barrel-vaulted plastered roof with transverse ribs. There is elaborate stencilling around each arch and a continuous inscription taken from the Rule of St Benedict at wall plate level. The east nave bay has a gilded and stencilled ceiling, and the area over the adjacent sanctuary arch is richly painted, imitating fabric.
The seven-bay nave arcade is formed of compound piers supporting round arches with billet and roll mouldings. There is a round-arched triforium stage with roll mouldings, and round-headed clerestory windows with shafting. There are passageway aisles beneath, to the north and south, with transverse horseshoe arches and groin-vaulted cells.
The sanctuary has a seven-bay engaged arcade of drum piers with scalloped capitals and roll-moulded arches. Above this at triforium level is a continuous blind arcade of round arches on single shafts. Above this are the seven deeply-recessed clerestory windows with shafts and roll-moulded arches. The ceiling is domed and decoratively painted.
The crossing has four tall, round-headed arches on compound piers and a coffered, painted ceiling. The transepts have round-arched openings from the aisles and taller arches into the transept chapels. The south transept contains a gallery and organ. The south transept also gives access to the sacristy on its south and east sides, with a door to the tower staircase. The staircase initially leads to the organ gallery.
The north transept contains the east apsidal Lady Chapel with the vault painted dark blue with gold stars. The richly-painted ceiling decoration throughout the interior of the Minster is reported to be by F E Banham, though in places it has been painted over with plain paint.
There is high-quality glass throughout the building: many of the windows are glazed in opaque white glass with coloured frames creating shapes. There are some stained glass windows by Shrigley and Hunt, including one of the Resurrected Christ over the north-east aisle door which commemorates the architect’s mother, Easter Eliza Easto Banham. Members of the Banham family including the architect are buried just outside this door.
There are fourteen framed plaster panels depicting the Stations of the Cross, presented by Archbishop Scarisbrick OSB in memory of Dom Ephrem Guy, parish priest at Bungay from 1885 to 1898 and one of the founders of the parish of Beccles.
Late-C20 fittings of note include the Rood beam, the high-quality stone altar forward of the sanctuary on its stepped platform, the pulpit and the iron and fabric tabernacle designed by Andrew Anderson.
