Sacred Heart Church is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

, Devon, England. It is a part of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Plymouth The Diocese of Plymouth () is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in England. The episcopal see is in the city of Plymouth, Devon, where the bishop's seat (cathedra) is located at the Cathedral Church of St Mary and St Boniface. Histo ...

. It was built from 1883 to 1884 and designed by Leonard Stokes. It is situated on the corner of South Street and Bear Street, close to

Exeter Cathedral Exeter Cathedral, properly known as the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter in Exeter, is an Anglican cathedral, and the seat of the Bishop of Exeter, in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Exeter, Devon, in South West England. The presen ...

in the centre of the city. It is a

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

church and a Grade II listed building.

History

Foundation

Before the church was built, Roman Catholics congregated for

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

in rooms of houses. The first post-Reformation Catholic chapel in Exeter was recorded in 1791 near the remains of St Nicholas' Priory, and this building was subsequently replaced by Sacred Heart Church. The site of the church was previously the Bear Tavern, which before the Dissolution of the Monasteries was the town house of the abbots of

Tavistock Abbey Tavistock Abbey, also known as the Abbey of Mary, the mother of Jesus, Saint Mary and Saint Rumon, is a ruined Order of Saint Benedict, Benedictine abbey in Tavistock, Devon. The Abbey was surrendered in 1539 during the Dissolution of the Monaste ...

.Exeter – Sacred Heart
from

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

, retrieved 1 January 2015 The church also remembers the history of the Reformation. There is contained within the church a statue of

St Thomas More Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VI ...

, a martyr of the Reformation, as well as a banner of the

five wounds In Catholic Church, Catholic Catholic devotions, tradition, the Five Holy Wounds, also known as the Five Sacred Wounds or the Five Precious Wounds, are the five piercing wounds that Jesus Christ suffered during his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifi ...

. This is an acknowledgement of the Western Rebellion in 1549. At the time of Catholic Emancipation in the mid-19th century, around 1% of religious attendants in the south west were Catholic.

Construction

A committee was formed in 1788 with the intention of serving Exeter's Catholic population, which was estimated at the time to be around 300 people. The local diocesan bishop oversaw the committee, and construction began as soon as enough funds were raised. Building work on the church started in 1883. The foundation stone was laid by William Vaughan, Bishop of Plymouth. When building was completed in 1884, the Catholic community moved from the chapel near the priory. It is the earliest surviving architectural work of Leonard Stokes. At the time, he was in a business partnership with C. E. Ware. On 18 November 1884, the church was opened. Inside, the church was made using materials such as Bath Corsham, Pocombe and

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone geological formation (formally named the Portland Stone Formation) dating to the Tithonian age of the Late Jurassic that is quarried on the Isle of Portland in Dorset, England. The quarries are cut in beds of whi ...

; the total construction cost approximately £10,000. In 1926, the church tower was completed. Originally designed as a pointed

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spire ...

, the flat-top tower contains a bell of .

Second World War

South Street was hit badly during the air raids on Exeter in April 1942. Sacred Heart Church, presbytery, and the neighbouring Baptist church survived. Part of this is credited to the priests of Sacred Heart. Parish priest Fr Thomas Barney, who passed buckets of sand and water to his curates, Fr Michael Walsh and Fr P Pedrick, who extinguished any incendiary bombs that landed on the church, presbytery and adjacent Baptist church. They remained there despite warnings from the air raid warden to evacuate. Fr Barney, parish priest, claimed afterwards to have seen the sign of the Cross within the sky on the night of the raid which almost destroyed the church. At the end of the war, the parish celebrated with a procession along the ruined South Street.

Post-war period

Sacred Heart was re-ordered along the guidelines of the

Second Vatican Council The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...

, with a wooden altar installed in 1966 to allow the priests to celebrate Mass facing the people. The church became linked to the local Catholic school, St Nicholas' Primary School. The church retained links to the Catholic chaplaincy at

Exeter University The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School o ...

until the formation of a separate chaplaincy mission in 1965.

Parish priests

1871-1911 - Rt. Reverend Provost W Hobson 1911-1914 - Canon C Gandy 1914-1918 - Canon J Shepherd 1918-1947 - Fr Thomas Barney 1947-1967 - Rt. Reverend Provost P Tobin 1967-1981 - Canon F Balment 1981-1986 - Fr K Collins 1986-1990 - Canon B Jaffa 1990-2015 - Monsignor Harry Doyle 2015-2018 - Fr John Deeny 2018-2023 - Fr Kieran Kirby 2023- Fr Petroc Cobb

Interior

The church contains a large wrought-iron rood screen, donated to the church in 1886. The church contains statues either side of the rood screen, depicting St Sidwell,

St George Saint George (;Geʽez: ጊዮርጊስ, , ka, გიორგი, , , died 23 April 303), also George of Lydda, was an early Christian martyr who is venerated as a saint in Christianity. According to holy tradition, he was a soldier in the R ...

St Edward the Confessor Edward the Confessor ( 1003 – 5 January 1066) was King of England from 1042 until his death in 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex. Edward was the son of Æthelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy. He succeed ...

, and an unknown figure believed to be St Walburga. The church contains a high altar in Portland stone, which no longer serves as the principal altar due to the re-ordering as a result of the Second Vatican Council. The church also contains three side altars. To the left of the main sanctuary is the

Lady Chapel A Lady chapel or lady chapel is a traditional British English, British term for a chapel dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus, particularly those inside a cathedral or other large church (building), church. The chapels are also known as a Mary chape ...

, and to the right sits the chapel of

St Joseph According to the Gospel, canonical Gospels, Joseph (; ) was a 1st-century Jews, Jewish man of Nazareth who was Espousals of the Blessed Virgin Mary, married to Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus ...

. There is a third altar dedicated to the diocesan patron,

St Boniface Boniface, OSB (born Wynfreth; 675 –5 June 754) was an English Benedictine monk and leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of Francia during the eighth century. He organised significant foundations of the church i ...

Parish

The church has three Sunday Masses: 5:30p.m. on Saturday and 9:15a.m. and 11:15a.m. on Sunday. There is also a Polish Mass at 2:30p.m. every Sunday. During weekdays there is a 10:00a.m. Mass from Monday to Saturday, and a 7:00pm Mass on Thursday evenings.Churches
from Diocese of Plymouth, retrieved 1 January 2016

Exterior

The Church of the Sacred Heart, South Street, Exeter.jpg, South side File:Sacred Heart RC Church, Exeter (3).JPG, Side chapel

References

External links

Sacred Heart Parish site
{{Diocese of Plymouth

Sacred Heart The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus () is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus Christ is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devotion to Christ is p ...

Roman Catholic churches in Devon Grade II listed Roman Catholic churches in England Grade II listed churches in Devon Roman Catholic churches completed in 1884 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United Kingdom Gothic Revival architecture in Devon Gothic Revival church buildings in England