Godalming, Wesleyan Church And School 1903

Photo ref: 49196

More about this scene

The Churches Like the Congregationalists before them, the Methodists set up their new church by the river (see 49196). They felt a need to fill 'The Surrey wilderness', an area of under-representation for Methodism, and significant funding came from a fund set up by Hugh Price Hughes: unfortunately, he died before it was finished, and the church was named after him as a memorial. The gardens were laid out to a design by Gertrude Jekyll. The Roman Catholic Church, discounting the 1000 years or so before King Henry VIII separated the Anglican church from it, has a relatively short history in Godalming. From 1899 mass was celebrated in a corrugated iron building in Croft Road, but in 1904 the Godalming Catholic Parish was created and a new priest, Father Hyland, was appointed. His lodgings at 36 Croft Road were opposite an empty hillside and he decided to build a new permanent church there. This was completed in 1906. He was probably its principal benefactor, and when he died in 1950 was buried under the Sanctuary.