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The Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs is the Roman Catholic church serving St Leonards-on-Sea, a town and seaside resort which is part of the Borough of Hastings in East Sussex, England. The present church, which combines a plain, unadorned Gothic Revival exterior with a lavishly decorated interior featuring extensive early 20th-century paintings by Nathaniel Westlake, is the third building used for Roman Catholic worship in the seaside resort. James Burton's new town of 1827, immediately west of Hastings, was home to a convent from 1848; public worship then transferred to a new church nearby in 1866. When this burnt down, prolific and "distinguished" architect Charles Alban Buckler designed a replacement. The church remains in use as the main place of worship in a parish which extends into nearby Hollington, and has been listed at Grade II by English Heritage for its architectural and historical importance. ==History== St Leonards-on-Sea was conceived and built as a new town by James Burton, a builder, property developer and speculator. In 1828, he bought a large area of wooded, sloping land (formerly part of the Manor of Gensing) which had a long shoreline facing the English Channel. He spent the next few years laying out a high-class planned community with houses, shops, hotels, markets, an Anglican church and facilities suitable for a fashionable seaside resort. Within a few years, it rivalled its ancient neighbour Hastings in size and popularity. A Roman Catholic place of worship was soon provided in the growing town. Rev. John Jones, the Honorary Chaplain of the Bavarian Embassy in London, received from the will of Lady Barbara Stanley a bequest of £10,000, of land and a house in St Leonards-on-Sea, all to be used for "religious purposes" for the benefit of Roman Catholics. He planned to build a convent for Jesuits, and extended the house for their use. They declared it unsuitable, and the proposed chapel and convent—large, intricately designed buildings in the Italianate style, conceived by Charles Parker—were not built. Work on less ambitious Gothic Revival-style buildings began in 1837, overseen by A.W.N. Pugin, and a newly founded order of nuns—The Society of the Holy Child Jesus—moved in.〔〔 Pugin started work on a convent chapel in 1848, but it was not completed until 1869 (by his son Edward Welby) and the convent refectory initially served as a temporary chapel for the sisters and the general public. The permanent chapel was dedicated to St Michael and All Angels.〔 Relations between the convent sisters and the parish were difficult, and in 1866〔 a new church was built for public use nearby, after which the convent chapel reverted to private use for The Society of the Holy Child Jesus only. The chosen site, on the west side of Magdalen Road near the convent, was above the east portal of Hastings Tunnel, a railway tunnel near Warrior Square station.〔〔 The church was designed by Charles Alban Buckler, a Roman Catholic convert and "one of the most distinguished early to mid-Victorian Roman Catholic architects".〔〔 It was founded on 21 August 1865 and opened for public worship on 24 May 1866,〔 and was consecrated in 1868 by the Bishop of Southwark Thomas Grant. Its most distinctive fixture was a large pietà carved in oak.〔 The church was destroyed by fire on 3 January 1887. Within two months, a tin tabernacle had been erected on the site to allow worship to continue while a new church was designed and built.〔 Charles Alban Buckler was again asked to design the replacement church.〔〔 Construction started on 30 March 1888,〔 although the foundation stone was laid on 21 July of that year. Builder Edmund Boniface executed Buckler's design, and the new Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs opened to the public on 6 July 1889.〔 Between 1908 and 1911, Nathaniel Westlake painted the interior with a range of vivid murals depicting scenes from the Bible. Much of this was stencilled, but the work is unusually extensive and it is unusual for such designs to have survived in churches.〔 Weather damage necessitated repairs in the 1950s, but by 1981 the murals' condition was so poor that whitewashing over them appeared to be the only course of action.〔〔 Enough money was raised for a full restoration to take place; artist Charles Camm was responsible for this.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs, St Leonards-on-Sea」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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