St Teilo's

The sketch below shows the most modern-looking of our village churches. It is St Teilo’s RC on Old Church Road

This striking white-rendered church was opened in 1964 (so its Diamond Jubilee will be next year!). It sits next to the Fox & Hounds, one of our oldest pubs and is opposite the old St Mary’s Churchyard, the site of our oldest church

The history of St Teilo’s is intriguing. Before the Reformation, St Mary’s (or using it’s even older name of St Dionisus) would have been Catholic, with all services and celebratory masses in Latin. With Henry VIII’s purging of the Catholic faith in 1534, St Mary’s/St Dionisus became the new state church with services conducted in the new Protestant religion, and all Catholics ruthlessly hunted down

We know next to nothing about Catholic worship in the years after, but in all probability, many of the local landowners and farming folk would have been torn between the two religions. A little later, during the Civil War, there were skirmishes and full-scale battles locally, with many who secretly still clung to the Royalist cause and the ‘old’ religion, whilst many others favoured the new Parliamentary style of Puritan worship

It's hard to imagine the turmoil that happened in the intervening years

Over many centuries, Whitchurch had remained a simple pastoral village, with a static population. Then in the 18th century, with the coming of the tinplate works, iron foundries and the canal, the population exploded. And then the railways arrived. I’m sure that many of the new villagers would have come from Catholic stock. Where would these folk have worshipped? Does anyone have family connections?

A hundred years later, even though the Catholic St David’s cathedral in Cardiff was the centre for worship in Cardiff, there must have been those in the parish who wanted a local church

In fact, it took another hundred years. It was only in 1924, the first Roman Catholic Mass since the Reformation was celebrated in the village (another centenary celebration next year perhaps?). It was held in the Fox Schoolroom, next door to the pub, and it must have been very successful, as it wasn’t long before the worshippers outgrew the premises and moved into the ‘skittle alley’!

There was a need to build a ‘proper’ church. It was only a year later that this church group had raised sufficient funds to erect a ‘tin tabernacle’ on land adjacent, the site of the current St Teilo’s. This was always to be a temporary church, but remained for the next 40 years until it was replaced by the bold design we see today

That is still not the end of the story, as the Catholic families in the village started to outgrow the new church, and additional accommodation was provided, in 2004, forty years after it was first opened

Pause for a moment next time you’re driving along Old Church Road, and consider the history of this tiny corner of the village

Does anyone have any stories about St Teilo’s?

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