The Ascot foundation was, undoubtedly, part of Cardinal Vaughan and the Duchess' vision of ringing the capital with missionary churches which would play a vital role in the new sprawling suburbs of London. Accordingly, the meeting at Ascot in 1893 was not some haphazard event but a planning meeting for the establishment of a Franciscan parish to the north of London. Cardinal Vaughan was there as was the Duchess, her agent Mr. Leatherly and probably Father Edward Fisher ofm, the future Guardian of the new parish. They would have studied all the available data and realised a Woodford Friary fitted into their plans. The Duchess would know the area after her work in Aldgate and the East End. she may even have had dealings with the local Rescue Society for Girls mentioned by a Gazeteer in 1865. Woodford Wells was also recognised as a fashionable place for the upper echelons of English society; land there was owned by Henrietta's friends and acquaintances in the Wellesley family as well as the Child family of Wanstead House.
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 1901: A group photo taken in front of the travellers' Friend tavern, situated opposite the friary and parish church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, in fashionable Woodford Wells, in the county of Essex. |
More importantly, Woodford had been reached by the railways in 1856 and so provided a potential source for expansion and fertile missionary work. In a letter written by Father Hilarius Dale to Edward Fisher ofm, dated 1st July 1896, Father Dale describes Woodford 40 years previously as so devoid of Catholics that he actually helped to move a family out so they could be nearer a Catholic Church. He described it as the "very acme of spiritual desolation". The missionary ambitions of the Duchess were articulated by Cardinal Vaughan in his speech of 7th July 1896 following the solemn consecration of the church. The Cardinal describes how, after that meeting at Ascot, the Duchess's agent Mr. Leatherley was dispatched into the Woodford area over a period of months in quest for a suitable site. According to the Cardinal, "people were constantly assuring Leatherley that there was the most delightful and secluded nooks in Epping Forest. But the Duchess was not seeking a secluded nook. Her object was not seclusion but the greatest possible publicity "to put down a church in the midst of the people, in a prominent position where it might be raised and everybody might see it and have an opportunity of attending a Catholic service if they desired to do so." The latter phrase is most significant. The Duchess and the Cardinal were not just trying to serve the small Catholic population of the area but seek converts, especially amongst the young, and so to stimulate the Catholic church's drive to control its own schools following the flurry of legislation of the late 1890's allowing denominational elementary education to develop.
In brief, the Dowager Duchess intended to choose a suitable location in the Epping Forest area to set up what would now be termed a Catholic complex: a Franciscan Friary, a parish church, a school for young children and a boarding school for young ladies. Within three years of that meeting in south Ascot, the Duchess had achieved her dream: the building of the Friary, the parish church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the foundation of the old Iron School (the precursor of St. Antony's) and the establishment of the Sister's of the Holy Family of Bordeaux in Mornington Road, Woodford Wells, were a reality. The Dowager Duchess was a visionary: she saw the church in Woodford as preaching, converting, educating as well as bringing Christ in the mass and sacraments to the people. Her plans were carefully devised with the help of others like Cardinal Vaughan, the Franciscans and the Guild of Ransome, (a society much given to public debate and apologetics on behalf of the Catholic Church). Even the choice of the patron saint for the new parish, St. Thomas of Canterbury (1118 - 1170) was an astute, calculated move. Thomas was London born, an Englishman; his shrine at Canterbury had been one of the greatest in medieval Europe. It was to Canterbury the first friars had come in September 1224 but, more especially, Thomas of Canterbury had laid his life down to defend the church against the crown, a subtle reminder, without giving offence, of the English Reformation with echoes of the martyrdom of Thomas More and John Fisher. (See Chapter Nine, page 60, on the life of St. Thomas of Canterbury).
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 The murder of archbishop Thomas Becket. An illustration from the Illustrated London News of Lord Tennyson's 1893 production of the play Becket at the Lyceum Theatre, London. |