The Parish of Underwood Road is situated in the Tower Hamlets Deanery. It was founded in 1850. The church was built in 1855 and consecrated on 27th September 1905.
Brothers.
St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church, Presbytery and Church Hall, Underwood Road
In 1829 land on the north side of Spicer (now part of Buxton) Street was purchased by trustees acting on behalf of the ’Spitalfields Catholic Charity School’. The site is now occupied by St. Patrick’s R.C. Primary School (see page 272). School buildings were erected on the site shortly afterwards, and in 1848 Father William Young, an Irish priest, began to use them on Sundays for the celebration of Mass. Father Young had previously served with great zeal in Cornwall, but was attracted to Stepney by the plight of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the neighbourhood in large numbers during the Irish potato famine. In 1849 his health failed and his work was taken over by Father Quiblier, a French Sulpician priest who had previously worked in Norwood. (fn. 57)
On 19 November 1850 Father Quiblier gave official notification of his intention to open a chapel under the name of St. Anne’s, in Spicer Street. (fn. 57) On 31 December 1850 the chapel (which was now licensed as a place of public worship) was registered for the solemnization of marriages. (fn. 58) This first chapel in Spicer Street presumably occupied the school-house.
Father Quiblier had already realized that his task in Mile End New Town and the surrounding districts was so great that it ’needed the organization and teamwork of a religious order if it was to be properly done’. (fn. 57) He therefore sought the help of his friend, Father Colin, founder and Superior General of the Marist Fathers. It was agreed that members of the order should take over the mission, and the first Marist Fathers arrived in September 1850; within a few months a community of six priests had been established. In 1852 Father Quiblier retired to the Sulpician home at Issy, where he died on 17 September of the same year. His work is commemorated by a stained-glass window in the present church. (fn. 57)
In October 1850 land at the south-west corner of Underwood Street (now Road) and Albert (now part of Deal) Street was purchased from John Cookson and his mortgagees. This site was bounded on the south by land bought by the trustees of the school connected with the King Edward Street Ragged School (see pages 272), and on the west by a strip of land intended for a southerly extension of Charlotte Place (now the western extremity of Underwood Road). In 1851 this proposed extension was abandoned, and the Marist Fathers were able to buy the strip of land, which was some eighty-five feet wide, and so became possessed of a site adequate for both a church and presbytery. (fn. 9)
The architect of the buildings now to be erected was Gilbert R. Blount of 6 Duke Street, Adelphi. He is said to have been a pupil of A. W. N. Pugin (fn. 59) and is known to have designed a number of Roman Catholic churches, including that of Our Lady and St. Catherine of Siena, Bow Road. (fn. 60) He submitted plans for the presbytery of St. Anne’s to the Office of Metropolitan Buildings in December 1851 and January 1852, (fn. 61) and the building (Plate 44b) was completed in 1852. (fn. 57)
In April 1853 Blount submitted plans for the church. The application included a plan and section (Plate 44a, fig. 69) showing that the church was intended to comprise a nave, transepts and chancel, with a central tower carrying a tall octag- onal spire. The builders were Messrs. Locke and Nesham of Theobalds Road. (fn. 62) The chancel was to be for the use of the community and the nave for the laity. (fn. 57)
St. Anne’s Roman Catholic Church, Underwood Road, 1855, plan. Re-drawn from original plans in the Office of Metropolitan Buildings
The nave was completed in 1855 and was orientated north and south. The altar was placed in a temporary apse at the south end, and the first Mass was said on 12 September 1855. The church was completed in 1894 to a reduced plan, omitting the transept and steeple, and with other small deviations. The marble altar was added in 1901, and the church was consecrated in 1905. The altar rails were erected in 1935 and the marble pulpit in 1939. (fn. 57)
The church (Plates 44, 45) is designed in the thirteenth-century style and is built of Kentish ragstone and ashlar dressings, with a slated roof. It consists of an aisled nave, six bays long, and a chancel of two bays, with a three-sided apse. Flanking the first bay of the chancel are a pair of chapels, dedicated to Our Lady and to St. Anne.
The northernmost bay of the nave, which is half the width of the other bays, is occupied by a vaulted lobby, above which is an organ loft, extending into the church with its polygonal fronts supported on two columns. Projecting from the second bay of the west aisle is a porch, which has now been converted into a chapel, and the outer wall of each aisle is lined with confessionals arranged between the buttresses.
The nave arcades are supported on clustered columns, their caps carved with formalized or naturalistic foliage, and the outer mouldings of the arches are stopped by figures of angels carrying religious symbols. The paired lancet windows in the clerestory are set behind coupled arches, which have hood-mouldings with carved human heads as stops, and are flanked by shafts with foliage caps. The open timber roof has arched, collar-braced trusses, springing from corbels adorned with angels playing musical instruments. Over the aisles are penthouse roofs having timber arches against each pier. The aisle windows are paired lancets, treated as in the clerestory, and below them the openings to the confessionals form triple arcades.
A high arch opens into the chancel, which has a vaulted roof and is enriched with stencilled decoration. The first bay is open to the side chapels but the rest of the lower stage is blank, except for a doorway to a sacristy on the east side. The tall, two-light windows have cusped heads with cinquefoil openings above. The altar is an imposing structure of white marble, with an arcaded and pinnacled reredos rising above the sills of the windows behind. The roofs of the two side chapels are vaulted, but in a curiously awkward manner.
The exterior is generally simple in character, and although nothing is scamped, interest is concentrated on the north front, a design showing French influence. The central bay is crowned by an arcaded gable and flanked by square buttressed turrets, with unexpectedly aggressive upper stages and tapered roofs. In the centre is a large rose window of elaborate design and below it a wide, arched doorway, with four receding orders. This is set beneath a steep gable, with a narrow gable on either side, each containing a small niche. In the ends of the aisles are three-light windows with geometrical tracery, and flanking the whole front are gabled angle-buttresses, supporting octagonal pinnacles.
The presbytery, with its garden wall and covered passageway, is constructed of the same materials as the church. It is a symmetrical, three-storeyed building, with gables, and buttresses of triangular section. The doorway is beneath a steeply pointed arch, and the windows are narrow, with cusped heads, and are employed singly, or in twos and threes beneath relieving arches.
The two buildings form a group of some distinction, and the interior of the church is particularly well designed, the stone carving being of very high quality.
¶The church hall, which stands to the south of the church, was also built from designs by Gilbert Blount. Tenders were invited in April 1858, that of a builder named Kelly for £1,130 being accepted. (fn. 63) The hall is a plain L-shaped building of one main storey, with stock brick walls and a steep, slated roof pierced by small dormer windows. The principal windows have four lights under a simple segmental head and the two doorways have pointed arches. In the 186o’s it housed a grammar school run by the Marist Brothers.
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp265-288#h3-0006