About the Parish

After the Restoration of the English Catholic Bishops in 1850 by Letters Apostolic ‘Universalis Ecclesiae’, Nicholas Wiseman was appointed to the Metropolitan See of Westminster. His Successor, His Eminence Cardinal Henry Manning, an old boy of Harrow School, who had a special affection for this area and its association with St. Thomas Becket, authorised the building of a small Chapel on the 6th May 1873 on a site in Roxborough Road and made a donation towards the cost.

The needs of the local Catholic Community were served here until the building of the present Church.

The foundation stone was blessed and laid by His eminence Cardinal Herbert Vaughan on 4th May 1894, the total cost of the building being in the order of £3,000.

Architecturally, the style of the Church is in the manner of the English Perpendicular of the 12th – 14th centuries.

A Potted History of the Church of Our Lady and St. Thomas of Canterbury: From October 1965 to June 2015
by Colin W. Hinton

From the publisher of the parish’s Endeavour Magazine, it features excerpts and events from Endeavour and our parish spanning fifty years of its history.

Click here to read more

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