History of our Church

St. Cuthbert's Parish carries on the community of Catholics which has existed in Elvet since Anglo-Saxon times. After the death of the last Catholic Bishop of Durham, Cuthbert Tunstal, in captivity for refusing royal supremacy in religion in 1559, people who remained attached to the old faith and loyal to the Pope, of whom there were many in the area, were served secretly by priests ordained previously, such as Blessed Thomas Plumtree, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in the Market Place in 1570, after having said Mass in the Cathedral during the Northern Rising, and later by those trained in the new seminaries abroad, like the four caught just after their arrival and executed at Dryburn in 1590, and St. John Boste in 1594 after more than 10 years work in the north. Some laymen were also executed for helping them, and many more, and their wives, were repeatedly fined or imprisoned for not attending Anglican Churches or refusing anti papal oaths.

Despite spells of more or less persecution, by the late 1650's there were resident priests in Durham City, one in a house on the site (33 Old Elvet) in front of what is now the University Chaplaincy, and also Jesuits, whose chapel was destroyed by a mob at the revolution in 1688 against the Catholic King James II, in whose short reign Catholics had come into the open, with England divided into Vicariates with bishops. The Jesuits were subsequently at 44-45 Old Elvet, with their own congregation, and from the 1660's to 1741 there was another secular mission in Gilegate, supported by the Maire family there. Other Catholic gentry acquired or occupied property in much of Old Elvet, partly as cover for income to support the clergy, who had founded a Northern Brethren's Fund which continues to welcome donations today, and endowed masses are still said for members of such families, most notably the Salvins of Croxdale, who have been there since the 15th century.

The congregation also included medical men, tradespeople, craftsmen, labourers and farmers. Despite another attack on a priest's house after the second Jacobite Rising in 1746, in general toleration of Catholic worship and clergy improved during the 18th century, but it was only in 1778 that the severe legal penalties against priests were abolished, and in 1791 that public chapels were at last permitted. From 1795 to 1821 the Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District, Bishop William Gibson, lived at the Elvet Mission with Thomas Smith, his auxiliary and successor. In 1827 the new St. Cuthbert's church (designed by Ignatius Bonomi) with its presbytery was opened, to replace the two Elvet Chapels, as the Jesuits left, shortly before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 which restored most other civil rights.

The parish school was built in 1864. From 1864 until 1981 one of the priests at St. Cuthbert's acted as prison chaplain. In 1948 as a result of housing developments St. Joseph's was established as a new parish and St. Cuthbert's School transferred there in 1961, and its building converted as the University Chaplaincy under St. Cuthbert's parish priest since 1963. The tower was added to the church in 1869. The large stained glass window of English saints and cardinals (by Harry Clarke) was installed in 1931 as a memorial to Canon William Brown, curate and parish priest 1874 - 1924. Marble altar rails with bronze gates were removed when the altar was brought forward in 1974 to implement new liturgical practices. The small stained glass window (by Mike Davis) is in memory of George and Agnes Finnigan, 1994, and the new oak ambo/lectern (by Fenwick Lawson, another parishoner) is in memory of Kate Miller, 1995. See Popish Elvet, parts 1 and 2 by Fr. J.M.Tweedy (1981), on sale at the church, for a fuller history of the parish and building.

Dr. A.I.Doyle