page_title: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark
section_title: Original cathedral
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark / Original cathedral
caption_attribution_description: English: St. George's Roman Catholic Cathedral Southwark, original appearance
context_page_description: The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark is a Roman Catholic archdiocese of the Latin Rite in England. The archepiscopal see is headed by the Archbishop of Southwark. The archdiocese is part of the Metropolitan Province of Southwark, which covers the South of England. The cathedral church is St George's Cathedral, Southwark.
context_section_description: The Papists Act of 1778 brought a certain limited freedom to those of the faith. Priests no longer moved in fear of imprisonment. Roman Catholics could run their own schools and could once more acquire property. In protest against the act, Lord George Gordon, on 2 June 1780, gathered a large crowd in St George's Fields to march on Westminster. Refused a hearing, they became violent and so began a week of burning, plundering and killing in which many Roman Catholic chapels and houses were destroyed. There is a legend that the high altar of the cathedral stands on the spot where the march began.
  In 1786 there was only one Roman Catholic chapel in the whole of south London, located at Bermondsey. It was then that the Reverend Thomas Walsh, a Douai priest, for £20 a year hired a room in Bandyleg Walk (near where the Southwark fire station now stands). Within two years, the numbers attending the little chapel had increased so rapidly that a new building became necessary. In 1793 a large chapel dedicated to St George was opened in the London Road at a cost of £2,000. It was designed by James Taylor of Weybridge, Surrey. According to tradition it was here that the first High Mass was celebrated in London, outside the chapels of ambassadors, since the time of King James II of England. The occasion was the Solemn Requiem sung for the repose of the soul of Louis XVI of France, who was executed on 21 January 1793.
  It was to St George's that the Reverend Thomas Doyle came in 1820, when the congregation stood at around 7,000. He became the first chaplain in 1829, when the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 removed nearly all the legal disabilities which Catholics had suffered for 250 years. The arrival of Irish immigrants in the area necessitated the construction of a larger house of worship. By 1839 enough money had been collected to make a start and the present site in St George's Fields (then an open space) was purchased for £3,200.
  Augustus Pugin, the noted architect of the Gothic Revival, was commissioned to design the church. The foundation stone was laid on 26th May, 1841 in a private ceremony held in the early morning so as not to arouse public unrest. Due to cost constraints, the left tower was never built. The stained glass was by William Wailes of Newcastle. The church was solemnly opened by Bishop Nicholas Wiseman (later Cardinal Wiseman) on 4 July 1848. To mark the occasion, Pope Pius IX sent a golden chalice and paten as a gift. Pugin was the first person to be married in the church on 10 August 1848 to his third wife Jane. 
  When Pope Pius restored the English Roman Catholic hierarchy, St George's was chosen as the cathedral church of the new Roman Catholic Diocese of Southwark, which was to cover the whole of southern England. For the next half-century, until the opening of Westminster Cathedral, St George's was the centre of Roman Catholic life in London. In response to the hostile reaction of many of the British peple to what was popularly characterized as "papal aggression", Bishop Nicholas Wiseman wrote "Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English people on the subject of the Catholic Hierarchy", a pamphlet of some thirty pages, addressed to the people themselves rather than to the educated minority who in the writer's view had so grossly and inexcusably misled them. Wiseman followed this with a series of lectures given at St. George's.
  In Thomas Grant was made the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Southwark; Doyle became the provost and administrator and remained so until his death on 6 June 1879. He is buried in the crypt. The new cathedral was consecrated by Bishop Butt on 7 November 1894 and on that day every year the feast of the dedication of the cathedral is celebrated throughout the diocese.
caption: St. George's Cathedral Southwark (19th century)
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