Hawley lies over in the Hampshire chunk of the Diocese of Guildford, and has two churches. The older one, Holy Trinity, seems to have had a Catholic tradition from the beginning, the beginning in its case being 1837 when the first church was built by the Revd John Randell: it’s under the patronage of Keble College, has a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, and still celebrates the mass eastward-facing, possibly the only church in the diocese where this is the case – at a main Sunday service, anyway. The first building was rebuilt in 1858, and the side chapel (of ‘The Resurrection’) constructed in 1908. Those Stations of the Cross have the definite stamp of Faith Craft about them, and are the right date for that, after 1947.
In the south of the parish is All Saints. This began life in 1882 as a chapel attached to a convalescent home, all founded by Charles Randell, cousin to Revd John, as a memorial to his wife. He invited the Clewer Sisters to run the home, and they remained until 1953 when it was passed to a secular charity. The chapel was always open to the public, but was of course outside the authority of the Bishop of Winchester who wouldn’t have been able to stop the creation of a Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in 1924. Changes in the population locally led to All Saints being deconsecrated in 1974. Descriptions prove it was quite elaborately decorated, with figures of the BVM and the Four Western Doctors, a rood screen, seven hanging sanctuary lamps, and a plethora of stained glass including an image of St Charles Borromeo. Where all that went is anyone’s guess. The building still stands, forlorn and derelict behind a fence and a patch of waste ground, awaiting – something.
Its modern successor is half a mile to the south. It was locked when I visited but the windows allow a very good view of the interior with its own Stations, large icons, and silvery tabernacle on a table.
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