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| The foundation of the Catholic mission in Whitby can be set at June 1794 but it wasn’t until April 1805 that the first Catholic chapel opened in Walker Street attached to the new presbytery. When it was no longer needed for worship, it was used for a variety of purposes, being adapted for a while as a school-room and then a Catholic Club before being demolished in 1958. The present church, designed by Messrs M E Hadfield of Sheffield and built of local Aislaby stone in the13th century gothic style, opened for worship in November |  |
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1867 occupying land that was formerly a garden adjacent to the chapel (on the corner of Bagdale and Brunswick Street). With all debts against the building finally paid, St Hilda’s church was finally consecrated in 1925. It is now a Grade II listed building and, along with the presbytery, is situated in a conservation area.
In 1884 a number of Sisters of Mercy arrived to take care of both St Hilda’s and St Patrick’s schools. Their first convent was established on Prospect Hill and in 1893 a large convent and school for borders was begun on the newly laid out Chubb Hill Road. In addition, in 1910 a convalescent home was established. In 1971 a decision was made to close both the home and the convent and the Sisters moved to a former hotel on Argyle Road. The date of the foundation of the original St Hilda’s school is uncertain (c.1828) but it met on the Cragg in a room near the bottom of Pier Lane and, after 1840, in a premises on Baxtergate. In 1877 a new school was opened on Albion Place, passing into the care of the Sisters of Mercy in 1884. The present school was opened on Waterstead Lane in 1976. In 1886 St Patrick’s school was opened on Church Street and was used as a Mass-centre on Sundays to serve the large number of parishioners living on the east side of town. The school closed in 1948. In 1929-30 a church dedicated to St Patrick was constructed across the yard from the school although St Patrick’s didn’t become an independent parish until 1976. The church was not built to the road, nor was a frontage constructed, because of plans at the time to straighten Church Street. These plans were abandoned with the outbreak of war in 1939 and were never revived. The frontage to the building was later given a grade listing so it now has to be maintained. [St Bede’s Mass-centre, served from St Patrick’s, was founded in Robin Hood’s Bay in 1955, originally based at premises in Thorpe Lane and then Madonna House Pastoral Centre.] Having been originally formed from it, St Patrick’s parish became part of St Hilda’s once again in 2004. The parish of English Martyrs, Sleights, had been formed in 1950 from parts of St Hilda’s parish and St Hedda’s, Egton Bridge. In 1998 a new church was dedicated, replacing a fifty-year-old ‘temporary’ structure. English Martyrs was amalgamated with St Hilda’s in 2004.
Extracted from a narrative history compiled by Mark T. Edwards. |
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