Chapter II: The Priests of the Nineteenth Century

Father Venantius, the first Guardian of St. Francis's, 1858-1873.

Growth and diversification

Another Ushaw priest, John Wilcock, came to replace John Briggs in Chester in 1833. His name, like that of John Ashurst, is known to us only through the baptismal and marriage registers. His death took place at Chester on May 18th, 1838, at Chester.18

John Briggs had been assisted for three months during 1825 by Michael Hickey, the first priest from Ireland to work in Chester. He was born in Kilkenny in 1801, and educated at St. Patrick's, Maynooth. After his ordination, he came over to Chester in August, 1825. His name appears several times in the baptismal register during the next three months as the officiating priest, and he must have been of great assistance to Father Briggs, working especially among the Irish members of his ever-increasing flock. In November, however, he was transferred to Garstang, in Lancashire, where he remained, doing great work there, until his death in 1871.19

The first Irish priest to take charge of Chester was Edward Carbery. Born in 1797, he was already forty one years of age when he took up his residence in Queen Street in 1838. During his long and busy life as parish priest, he saw and initiated several remarkable developments in the Catholic life of his adopted city. Nothing shows more clearly the esteem in which he was held than his elevation to the dignity of a Canon of the first Cathedral Chapter, when the new diocese of Shrewsbury was created in 1852.

Almost from the time of his arrival, Father Carbery began to announce in the Catholic Directory the times of the Sunday services in his chapel. This, in itself, is an indication of the growing importance of Chester as a Catholic centre, and a sign of the greater freedom of the times. There was still only one Mass, at 10.30 a.m., presumably to give him time to get to the more distant parts of the parish when it was necessary to say another Mass. From 1843 until 1847, he was saying Mass at Nantwich, in an old Methodist chapel which he had rented. For the next five years, Nantwich was served from Crewe, which had its first resident priest in 1844. Many years were to elapse before either place had a proper church. Vespers were at 3 o'clock, and as the chapel already had a good organ, they, and possibly the Mass, were sung. There was also Sunday school in the morning, afternoon and evening. Before long, the chapel was dedicated to St. Werburgh. It was fitting that the patron saint of the old Catholic city, whose shrine was destroyed so long before, should be remembered once again.

Throughout the 1840's and 1850's, as will be shown later, the Catholic population was increasing rapidly. Large numbers of Irish people were settling in the completely new area beyond Foregate Street, known as Boughton, and at the same time there was a fairly consistent flow of converts into the Church. In 1847, Father Carbery wrote to his bishop, saying that since 1842, he had received fifty into the Church. By 1851, he gave the average number of attendants at Divine service on a Sunday as eight hundred and sixty.20

It must, therefore, have been clear that a site for a new church was urgently needed. By 1854, through the generosity of the Catholics, an eighteenth century house in Little St. John Street - Dee House, as it was called - was purchased, together with its grounds. Bishop Brown, however, after considering the proposition, gave up the idea of building a church there. The decision must have caused disappointment, but in the light of the future, it was a wise one. Catholic Emancipation was well within living memory, and Catholics were only just beginning to emerge into the public life of Chester. To have built a church side by side with the old St. John's Church, and on land which had once formed part of St. John's property, might have roused antagonism. Indeed, the last inhabitants of Dee House had been a Protestant Minister and his family. He had fallen into disgrace with the Bishop of Chester for giving hospitality to a man named Gavazzi, who had gained notoriety in Chester by spreading scandalous stories about priests and nuns. Moreover, at that time, the old Palace of the Bishops of Chester, now the Y.M.C.A., was still occupied by the Chancellor of the Cathedral, who was alarmed by what was afoot. In any case, the site was not really suitable. It was a distance away from the areas in the city where Catholics were settling. If Dee House had been demolished to make way for a church, the builders would have struck the Roman amphitheatre, part of which, in fact, lies below Dee House; they might even have found themselves floundering in the rubble which filled its arena, with all the extra problems and expense which this would have involved.

Having obtained Dee House, a solution for its use was found which, in the long run, was to bring an enormous blessing to the Church in Chester. It was proposed to invite a teaching Congregation of nuns to take over the site, and on January 29th, 1854, four Faithful Companions of Jesus took up residence.21 The story of the Dee House Convent rightly belongs to the chapter of this book which deals with education, since this was the contribution which the Faithful Companions of Jesus, and later the Ursulines, made to Catholicism in Chester. It must have brought considerable relief to Canon Carbery when the Faithful Companions of Jesus undertook the teaching of the poorer children, in addition to the boarding school they established. He himself then began to collect the £400 needed to defray the cost of a building behind the chapel which subsequently became the boys' school.

Meanwhile, the question of a new church was solved in a way which illustrates how very quickly Catholicism was growing in Chester. This was the opening of an entirely new Mission, made possible by the coming of the Capuchin Friars.22 On 22nd December, 1858, the Superior of the Pantasaph friary, Father Seraphin, established the Mission, of which Father Venantius became the first Guardian. Taking up residence in two small cottages in Cuppin Street, the friars began their work at the opposite end of the town from St. Werburgh's, in an area where there was already a large section of the Catholic population. Mass was first said in a rented room in Bishop Lloyd's Palace, a house in Watergate Row, well-known even today for its sixteenth century architecture. However, it was large enough for only sixty to seventy people, and therefore, in 1860, the chapel was removed to a wooden shed at 25 Watergate Row, which could accommodate three hundred. Two years later, in 1862, the friars were able to purchase from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners a piece of land and a house situated between Grosvenor Street and Cuppin Street. Here, on 23rd September, 1862, the foundation stone of a new church was laid by Bishop Brown. The early setbacks of this Franciscan Mission, and its final achievement in the opening of the present church of St. Francis will be described later.

The death of Canon Carbery took place in 1861. Only one hundred years had elapsed since the Bishop of Chester was reporting the handful of "Papists of a lower sort" in his Returns to the House of Lords; and yet, how much had been accomplished! There were now two flourishing Missions, with Confraternities to which the laity belonged, the education of Catholic children was safeguarded, and religious life had once more returned to the city where it had once been destroyed. Canon Carbery himself was known in the city, he was on the Governing Body of the Royal Infirmary; even the prison in the Castle was open to his visits. In the words of the Chester Chronicle, "he left behind the memory of a high and estimable character". It was no mean achievement.