page_title: Whitwick
section_title: Roman Catholic
hierarchical_section_title: Whitwick / Religion / Other places of worship / Roman Catholic
caption_attribution_description: English: The Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Cross, Whitwick, built on Parsonwood Hill in 1904.
context_page_description: Whitwick is a large village in Leicestershire, England, close to the town of Coalville in the northwest of the county. It lies in an ancient parish which formerly included the equally historic villages of Thringstone and Swannington. It was an important manor in the Middle Ages, which once included Bardon and Markfield, parts of Hugglescote, Donington le Heath, Ratby, Bocheston, Newtown Unthank and Whittington. As early as 1293, Whitwick had a weekly market and a four-day fair. The population of Whitwick, according to the 2001 census was 10,815 persons. 8,092 of these fell into the 16-74 working age range, although only 4,689 were employed. The population of the village at the 2011 census had fallen to 8,612.
context_section_description: Due to the residency at Grace Dieu Manor of a zealous and wealthy convert to Roman Catholicism, Ambrose de Lisle, Whitwick became an important centre of the Roman Catholic revival.
  It was due to De Lisle that a Cistercian monastery, Mount St. Bernard Abbey, was established within the parish in 1835, and a church (designed by Pugin) was built on Parsonwood Hill in 1837. In 1875, a small convent of Rosminian nuns was established in the presbytery, which had been built adjacent to the original church in August 1848, and which transferred to Loughborough in the twentieth century. The presbytery, still referred to as 'The Old Convent' is now a private residence and was designated a Grade II listed building in 1983.
  In establishing his mission, De Lisle recruited a charismatic priest, Aloysius Gentili, from Rome, who arrived at Gracedieu in June 1840 and by May of the following year, De Lisle claimed that some five hundred and twenty persons had become converted to the catholic faith as a result of Gentilli's outreach.
  The present Roman Catholic Church was built in 1904 from the designs of Thomas Ignatius McCarthy. This was built on the opposite side of Parsonwood Hill, at which time Pugin's church was demolished, though the cemetery of the old church remains. A school was also built to the rear of the new church to replace the original school at Turylog (Thurlough), which had been opened in 1843. A tower was added to the new church in about 1910, from funds bequeathed by Samuel Wilson Hallam, landlord of the Queen's Head, Thringstone. The tower contains a chime of fifteen bells operated by a baton keyboard, located in the first storey chamber of the tower and which was installed by Taylors of Loughborough in 1960.
caption: Holy Cross Roman Catholic Church, Whitwick
exif: {}