Chapter Eleven
XI

MISSIONARY AND PAROCHIAL WORK
ONE of the most important of the various activities of the
Community at Belmont is that of serving numerous Mass-
centres for several miles around, and indeed most of those
in the county have been cared for by priests from St Michael's
at one time or another. This is, of course, one of the principal
works of almost every Benedictine monastery, and it is
certainly one that would have appealed strongly to our
Founder, Francis Wegg-Prosser, who was aflame with
enthusiasm for the conversion of England. It was also one
of the chief objects of Abbot Kindersley, who aimed to make
the monastery the centre of Catholicism in Herefordshire.
But it was not until after the House had become an indepen-
dent entity that this work took a prominent part in the lives
of the monks. It is true that in the days of the Common
House some of the Professors occasionally gave a retreat, and
fairly frequently 'supplied' at secular parishes for a week-end;
but there were in those days no Mass-centres for which
Belmont was responsible and which were regularly served
from the monastery. But after the end of the 1914-1918 war
this kind of work developed greatly, and altogether there
were eventually fifteen places which, either as parishes or as
Mass-centres, were in the care of the Belmont monks.

At first the only outlet for missionary zeal was work as a
curate on one or other of the parishes belonging to Downside
or Ampleforth, and most of the senior Belmont priests
served in this capacity at places scattered all over the
country: South Wales, London, Lancashire, and this was
useful experience. But eventually other spheres of activity
came into existence, and these fell into three categories:
(i) chaplaincies of convents, which were either residential

188

MISSIONARY AND PAROCHIAL WORK 189
or else were undertaken by monks living at Belmont; (2)
Mass-centres in the immediate neighbourhood served at
week-ends from the Abbey; (3) parishes belonging to Bel-
mont, or leased for a time from other monasteries. In the
years that followed, practically every priest of St Michael's
did pastoral work in one or other of those three ways. And
the first opening of this sort came in 19161 when it was decided
that we should accept the chaplaincies of the two Bullingham
convents which, it was believed, the Archbishop was about
to offer, and which shortly afterwards he did offer; and so
began the close connection with the Sisters of Charity and
the Poor Clares in that village which lasted for some twenty-
five years. The former chaplaincy terminated at the out-
break of the second war in 1939 when the Sisters moved away
to Croft Castle, and the latter in 1955 when Vincentian
priests took over. Similarly the monks served the other house
of the Sisters of Charity in Hereford itself, and to these three
was added in 1920 the chaplaincy to the Holy Cross nuns at
Belmont House, who arrived in that year. For some twenty
years (i.e. until his death in 1938) Fr Gerard Sweeney was
chaplain to the Bullingham Sisters of Charity, by whom he
was much beloved; and for a similar period the chaplaincy
to the nuns and school at Belmont House was held by Dom
Cuthbert Formby, and after his death in 1946 by Dom
Gregory Buisseret. Thus it was that for roughly a quarter
of a century four priests went out every morning at about
6 a.m. to say Mass at those four convents; and in winter
this was not seldom a formidable undertaking, particularly
when, as sometimes happened, Bullingham was cut off by
sheets of flood-water. Most of the older priests today have
vivid memories of those icy morning journeys, and indeed
the four daily external Masses were a prominent feature of
life at Belmont—one which has now entirely disappeared.

It was in 1919 that the Community obtained a parish of
its own for the first time. In view of the fact that Downside
had for some years advocated the transference of parishes to
Belmont by the other Houses, and that she herself wanted to
1 Apart from a short-lived Chaplaincy at Leominster (1914-1915) due to the

illness of the priest there.
I QQ THE HISTORY OF BELMONT ABBEY
lessen the number of her own parishes, it had been expected
that sooner or later one of the Downside parishes would be
offered to St Michael's; and if so, what more obvious choice
than Hereford? And so it came about that when the war
ended Abbot Butler secured the assent of his community to
his plan of offering the Hereford mission to Belmont, and in
the autumn of 1919 the offer was duly made, and was accepted
on September 26. Archbishop Bilsborrow tried to delay the
transfer, as he thought it should not take place until the Bull
Cambria Celtica had been implemented, but in November the
change was made and Fr Placid Smith was inducted as
parish priest, with Fr Antony Robison as curate. This parish
continued in the hands of Belmont for thirty-five years,
until unhappily, owing to the pressure of man-power and
the great expansion of Hereford after the Second World War,
it was found necessary to relinquish it to the secular clergy
in 1954.

After the acquisition of Hereford in 1919 there followed in
the next few years a series of further undertakings. The
coming of the nuns to Belmont House in 1920 has already
been noted, and that was followed by the taking over of the
little chapel of Grosmont in 1921. This had originated in
1910 on the dismantling of the chapel and presbytery at
Coedangred, near Skenfrith, which had been built in 1847.
It may be remembered that this was one of the sites originally
offered to the Congregation for the building of the Common
House before Belmont was chosen. There was also another
small chapel near Grosmont at Dan-y-Graig which had been
put up in 1874 and was eventually dismantled in 1948, and
which was served by a priest from Glen Trothy, the home of
a branch of the Vaughan family. But for some years before
1921 a secular priest living at Grosmont had tried to serve
all these small chapels, until in that year Archbishop Mostyn
asked Abbot Kindersley to take charge of them all, and so
they were thenceforward served from the Abbey.
There were only two Benedictine missions in Hereford-
shire: Hereford and Weobley, and both of these belonged to
Downside. Not long after the handing over of Hereford to
Belmont, the same action was taken as regards Weobley. In

MISSIONARY AND PAROCHIAL WORK 191
this attractive village, at one time a place of some importance
that sent two Members to Parliament, a small chapel had
been built in 1835 by the Monington family of Sarnesfield,
and subsequently it became connected with the families of
Salvin and Worsley-Worswick. In this neighbourhood there
had been quite a high percentage of Catholics, and as far
back as 1837 the congregation there numbered one hundred;
but since then there had been a steady decline. Several
times Downside had asked St Michael's to look after this
small mission, the first occasion being in 1912, while a
second invitation was made in 1915, but each appears to
have been declined. But when, in February 1923, a third
offer of it was made it was this time accepted, and the chapel
there was from that date served at week-ends from Belmont
until 1940, when Dom Osmund Ward went to live nearby
at Broxwood whence he served Weobley. But in 1950 he
moved to Weobley which since that date has had its resident
priest. Weobley is of particular interest because it has always
been a Benedictine parish, and was started as far back as
1830 by a monk of Downside. Moreover it was the first
Catholic church to be built in Herefordshire since the
Reformation, and from it were once served many missions
which now have their own priests. At present the priest at
Weobley serves not only Broxwood but also Kington, on the
northern border of the county, and this has been done since

1938.

But 1923 was also marked by two other enterprises. The
first of these was the building of a small chapel at Gorsty
Common, a few miles from the monastery, on land given by
Mrs Panniers of Cobhall Manor Farm, and this was served
every Sunday for over ten years. Since then it has been
served once a month. The second was a more ambitious
undertaking. As far back as 1902, i.e. in Prior Cummins' time,
Bishop Hedley had invited the Prior to found a mission at
Ledbury, where there were some forty Catholics. There was
then no Mass-centre there, and the Catholics were eight
miles from the nearest church at Little Malvern, miles which
involved the climbing of the Malvern Hills. The invitation
was gladly accepted, and Fr Placid Wray of Ampleforth,
102 THE HISTORY OF BELMONT ABBEY
who was then the novice-master at Belmont, would cycle
over every Saturday. Within less than a year the prospects
there were so encouraging that he hired a disused cider
warehouse to serve as a chapel, taking it on a lease of twenty-
one years and furnishing it with the rood-screen and benches
from the old Rotherwas chapel. There was an enthusiastic
response from the local Catholics and many converts were
made. Also many 'concealed' Catholics were thus brought
out into the open and returned to the performance of their
duties, so that soon there was a good congregation. After
four years of this preparatory work Bishop Hedley was able
to send thither a resident secular priest and under him the
mission further prospered. But owing to the scarcity of priests
later on, Archbishop Mostyn in 1923 requested the monastery
to provide a chaplain for Bartestree Convent who would also
serve the Ledbury parish, and Dom Gregory Buisseret was
sent to Bartestree for this purpose. A few months later the
owner of the warehouse (which was very inconveniently
situated and hard to find) stated that as the lease would
expire on Lady Day, 1924, it could be renewed but at a
much higher rental. In face of this threat, however, the
parishioners decided to find another place if possible, and it
happened that the post office had just been vacated for a
new one They were successful in leasing the old office,
which was quite a large building, and much better situated
than the former chapel, and on the next day all the available
members of the congregation helped to move all the furnish-
ings to their new chapel, much to the indignation of the
former landlord who had thought he was certain to be able to
enforce his new terms on them. One year later there was a
further move, because the former post office proved too
small for the growing congregation, and in 1925 therefore a
house, with a large carpenter's shop behind it, was bought,
and with some modifications was converted into the present
church of the Holy Trinity, which was opened on June 24,
1926. Immediately after that the parish reverted to the
secular clergy.
Equally successful was the development of the church at
Hay. This place had at one time been served from Weobley,

MISSIONARY AND PAROCHIAL WORK 193
but since then had for a long time been left without a Mass.
In 1922, however, the well-known family of Grant in that
town, who had had several of their boys educated at Belmont,
persuaded Dom Ildephonsus Flannery, then serving Weobley
that there were sufficient Catholics in the neighbourhood of
Hay to make it worth while to have a chapel there. At first
Mass was said only occasionally in a house there, but this
was done regularly from 1923, and in 1929 the large room
over the Market Hall in the centre of the town was leased,
and a priest went there every week-end. As is so often the
case in such circumstances, the setting up of a chapel with
a regular Sunday Mass resulted in the discovery of many
Catholics, and these were augmented by the billeting in the
town of many Catholic children from some of the cities
during the Second World War. Soon after the war there
occurred what seemed at first to be a disaster, but which
turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for in 1946 a serious
fire destroyed much of the chapel and its contents. In actual
fact the payment of the fire insurance money, together with
the wide-spread sympathy which took the practical form of
vestments and cash contributions, so benefited the chapel
and mission that in 1948 it was taken over by the Bishop of
Menevia and was put in the care of the secular clergy. Thus
it is clear that as early as 1923 the monastery was exerting
very considerable influence in the neighbourhood, and in
fact by that year the whole of the county of Herefordshire,
with the exception of the small areas of Ross and Leo-
minster and the chaplaincy at Courtfield,1 was, so far as the
Catholic religion was concerned, in the care of the Fathers
from Belmont, and a part of Breconshire as well.
It had in fact been the declared policy of the House to
concentrate, so far as parish work was concerned, on the
area around Belmont, but by 1923 this district was sufficiently
provided for, and there has only been one further develop-
ment in the county since then (to be recorded below). So it
came about that as the number of priests at St Michael s
increased, yet further openings were sought to occupy then,
so that the fullest use could be made of our man-power,

1 Courtfield itself was served from Belmont from 1932 to 1950.
IQ4 THE HISTORY OF BELMONT ABBEY

especially as at that time there was still no real school at
Belmont. So it was that when in 1926 the Downside Com-
munity asked whether we would take over the parish of
Hindley in Lancashire on a lease of eight years the offer was
accepted; while only a year later the parish of Clayton
Green, not far from Hindley, was similarly leased for a
period from Downside, so that from 1927 two Belmont priests
were working in that neighbourhood.

Soon afterwards, nearer home, yet another local Mass-
centre, alluded to above, was started in Herefordshire, when
in 1929 the Belmont parish priest, DomJohn Owen, found
that there were a number of Catholics in the vicinity of
Broad Oak, not very far from where the former Coedangred
chapel had been; and so in that year he built a small chapel
by the roadside at Broad Oak, the altar furniture for which
was made by a laybrother of Belmont, Brother Peter Jones.
Incidentally both this chapel and that at Gorsty Common
were provided with bells of some historical interest, for they
were taken in 1920 from the old chapel at Rotherwas, the
home of the Bodenham family. They were said to have been
cast by a French emigre priest a hundred years earlier. This
Broad Oak chapel has survived a number of the other small
Mass-centres in the county which in recent years have been
given up, and it is still served at the present time.

Thus throughout the nineteen-twenties the number of
Sunday Masses provided by the Abbey steadily grew, but at
the same time another form of the Apostolate was undertaken
by Belmont priests: provision for the spiritual needs of nuns,
and of the children, of which, in many cases, they had charge.
The convents in the immediate vicinity have already been
noted and had long been in the care of the Belmont Fathers,
and here it may be mentioned that in 1930 the nuns of the
Holy Cross left Belmont House which had proved too small
for them. But the house was not empty for long, for in the
following year there came a detachment of Sisters of the
Assumption from their convent in Kensington, and these
opened at Belmont House a finishing school for foreign girls.
They remained until 1954, and throughout this time a daily
Mass was said there by one of the monks. But in addition

MISSIONARY AND PAROCHIAL WORK 195
to serving these convents/the monastery also helped other
Convents.
Oulton East Bergholt and Talacre, the Carmelites of
Sidenham and Waterbeach, and also the convents at
Bartestree, Kilgraston, CUfford and Broxwood
In this tale of missionary expansion the year 1934 is
no able because it was then that Belmont received its second
large parish By then it had had Hereford for fifteen years,
but in this year Downside offered the Cumberland mission
of Whitehaven, and on September n it was transferred to
Belmont and four priests were sent there to take change of
the town's two Catholic churches, one of which (at Kells)
was later made into a separate parish. These two parishes
have flourished greatly and at the present time they absorb
the energies of six Belmont priests, four at Whitehaven and two at Kells

To complete the tale of missionary expansion to date: soon
after the Second World War Downside gave up yet another
parish this time that of Redditch in Worcestershire, and in
1948 it was offered to, and accepted by Belmont. That town
like many others, had greatly increased its population
and immediately after the war, and so whereas at one tirne
it had had but a single priest, it is now cared for by four
monks from St Michael's. Finally, in 1949 Dom Vincent,
Fogarty established a Mass-centre at Pontrilass and in 1955
Dom Luke Waring set one up at Peterchurch.
And so in the course of years many spheres of activity have
been made available for the monastery, and Belmont monks
have gone out to many parts of the country, even though
the original idea in this respect has not materialised. For m

1 Since 1949 the monks at Alderwasley have served the parish of Wirksworth.

and since 1950 that of Cronford, near Matlock.
196 THE HISTORY OF BELMONT ABBEY
the old days it was generally assumed, even before the
Michaelian Community came into existence, that if ever
Belmont did have monks of its own their sphere of missionary
activity would naturally be Wales; and it will be remembered
that when all the missions of the Congregation were divided
up amongst the three older Houses in 1891 it was intended
that those in Wales should be equally divided amongst them
in order to facilitate their transference to Belmont if and
when circumstances should make that possible.1 It was thus
taken for granted that if Belmont should ever have any
missions they would be not in England but in Wales. It has
not in practice worked out like that, so far; but the missionary
zeal of the Belmontese has nevertheless found adequate outlet
elsewhere, and in this, as in so many other matters, the help
and the grace of God has blessed their efforts.

* Actually, this was not done. For, of the six Benedictine missions in Wales,

one was allotted to Downside, two to Ampleforth, and three to Douai.