page_title: St George's Church, Polegate
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St George's Church, Polegate / History
caption_attribution_description: St George's Church, Eastbourne Road, Polegate, East Sussex, England. A Roman Catholic church serving the small town of Polegate. It opened on 7 December 1938. This picture shows the entrance porch.
context_page_description: St George's Church is a Roman Catholic church of the parish of Hailsham and Polegate serving the town of Polegate in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England.
  Consideration was first given to "bringing the Mass to Polegate" in the late 19th century, when it was a rapidly growing village within the vast Catholic parish of the seaside resort of Eastbourne to the south. Only with the arrival of a new priest at Eastbourne in 1936 was any action taken; but within two years construction work was underway and by the end of 1938 the simple but "very dignified" flint- and stone-built Gothic Revival church was opened. Structural problems occurred after World War II as expenditure was concentrated on other churches in the parish, and remedial work had to be carried out in the 1950s and 1960s.
  St George's Church has experienced five changes to the composition of its parish. It was initially a chapel of ease within Eastbourne parish, but in 1958 it became a separate district within Eastbourne with its own priest and two years later became independent of Eastbourne when the new parish of Polegate with Hampden Park was created.
context_section_description: Polegate, originally a small village in the parish of Hailsham, grew rapidly in the 19th and early 20th century after the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway opened two routes which met at a junction there.  There were only 50 houses in 1873, but by the early 21st century the population exceeded 8,000 and suburban development linked the town to its larger southern neighbour Eastbourne.  Our Lady of Ransom Church in Eastbourne town centre served Polegate as part of its extensive parish. In October 1895, the priest of that church told the Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Southwark that there was demand for Mass to be celebrated in various distant towns and villages.  In Polegate, 5 miles (8.0 km) from Eastbourne, he said there were nine Catholics who could be better served by a local place of worship.  In the same year, a man named William Attwood of Osborne House died. The house (no longer in existence) had a private oratory which may have been used for public Masses, although there is no definitive record of this. Nothing more happened until 1913, when another man allowed his house in the Hampden Park area of Eastbourne (close to Polegate) to be used for worship. This arrangement was formalised into a monthly celebration of Mass from May 1919.
  Father John Corballis became parish priest of Our Lady of Ransom Church in January 1936 and immediately "set his mind on building a church at Polegate". The following month he paid £1,318.10s.10d. for a plot of land on the southeast corner of the Polegate crossroads—the junction of the High Street and the main road to Eastbourne. This debt was cleared with the help of regular fundraising at that church. Building work on the site was planned to begin in summer 1938 and an architect was commissioned to design the new church. On 7 June 1938, Bishop William Francis Brown, Auxiliary Bishop of Southwark and Titular Bishop of Pella, led a service at which the foundation stone was laid. Building work took exactly six months, and on 7 December 1938 Bishop Peter Amigo and several priests from Eastbourne attended the first Mass in the church, which was dedicated to Saint George. Construction cost £4,000 and fittings cost a further £500, and a balance of £3,000 was outstanding.
  At first there was one Mass on a Saturday evening and one on a Sunday morning, and this pattern continued throughout the time the church was a chapel of ease to Our Lady of Ransom Church.  Stations of the Cross were installed in March 1939. World War II brought a large influx of evacuees, mostly children, to the Eastbourne area, and many more people attended the churches in the parish: St George's Church was described as "full" each week. Later in the war, as evacuees left and bombing raids made the town unsafe, services at all churches in the parish were cut back and some closed temporarily, but St George's remained open.
  After the war, attention turned to providing a larger church at Hailsham, buying a site for a future church at Hampden Park and reorganising the vast parish of Eastbourne. Canon John Curtin, who became priest of Our Lady of Ransom Church in January 1956, decided to create independent parishes for several of the chapels of ease in the parish, including Polegate—noting that this was "in accordance with their express desire over many years". The process happened in two stages. In July 1958 Father John Flanagan was appointed as the first parish priest of Polegate with Hampden Park, although at first it was still a district within Eastbourne parish. St George's Church was not formally separated from Eastbourne until June 1960 when St Joachim's Church opened at Hampden Park and the new parish of Polegate with Hampden Park was formally created. Prior to the opening of St Joachim's, Hampden Park residents worshipped at St Gregory's Church in the Old Town of Eastbourne or at St George's; then from August 1958 Mass was celebrated in a public hall and then in a derelict house in the grounds of which St Joachim's was built.
  Meanwhile, as early as 1952 St George's Church was found to have been experiencing
caption: The entrance porch "projects oddly" beyond the nave.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "SAMSUNG", "Image Model": "SAMSUNG ST60 / VLUU ST60 / SAMSUNG TL105 / SAMSUNG ST61", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery 6.0.6001.18000", "Image DateTime": "2012:10:28 20:20:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2406", "Image XPTitle": "[83, 0, 65, 0, 77, 0, 83, 0, 85, 0, 78, 0, 71, 0, 32, 0, 68, 0, 73, 0, 71, 0, 73, 0, 84, 0, 65, 0, 76, 0, 32, 0, 67, 0, 65, 0, 77, 0, 69, 0, 82, 0, 65, 0, 0, 0]", "Image XPComment": "[32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, 32, 0, ... ]", "Image XPSubject": "[83, 0, 65, 0, 77, 0, 83, 0, 85, 0, 78, 0, 71, 0, 32, 0, 68, 0, 73, 0, 71, 0, 73, 0, 84, 0, 65, 0, 76, 0, 32, 0, 67, 0, 65, 0, 77, 0, 69, 0, 82, 0, 65, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/160", "EXIF FNumber": "16/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:10:27 09:08:59", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:10:27 09:08:59", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "53/10", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "49/10", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1944", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "7940", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4180"}