Chapel To The Former Convent Of The Holy Child Jesus

Chapel to the Former Convent of the Holy Child Jesus, Magdalen Road, St Leonards-on-Sea

This is a former convent chapel of outstanding High Victorian Gothic quality. The lower walls date from circa 1850 and were designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, with completion and alterations carried out by his son Edward Welby Pugin. The building is constructed of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and a slate roof. The north aisle has been rendered.

The chapel was consecrated in 1868, though work continued for some years afterwards. The east window was completed in 1872, the reredos and corbels in 1874, choir stalls were installed by 1876, and the organ was added in 1881.

The building comprises a five-bay nave with a bellcote and apsidal end, north and south aisles, a large south porch, a four-bay choir with a two-bay north chapel and a four-bay vestry to the south. The exterior features a gabled stone bellcote to the west of the nave and a cross-shaped saddlestone to the east. The west end has a rose window with sexfoil openings and smaller rose windows to the aisles. The clerestorey windows have sexfoil heads, with paired trefoil-headed lancets obscured by the aisles below. The aisles contain arched windows with double lancets with trefoil heads and trefoil lights above; on the south side these are divided by buttresses. The south aisle has a circular window to the east. The south porch is massive, inherited from an earlier, larger church foundation, with octagonal corner turrets separated by a quatrefoil pierced parapet and an arched doorcase. The chancel has tall windows to north and south with paired trefoil-headed lancets and sexfoil heads, plus a cross-shaped saddlestone to the east. The south vestry has four paired trefoil-headed lancets. The north chapel, two bays deep, has a lancet window to the north and a circular window to the east which obscures two of the chancel windows. The large east window has five trefoil-headed lights with three circular sexfoil openings above and end buttresses.

The interior begins with a chapel vestibule featuring arched wooden double doors and glazed zigzag tiling in green, brown and cream. The nave has an arched arcade supported on clustered stone columns, with arch-braced roofs in both nave and aisles. A wooden organ gallery is positioned to the west.

The west Dolours Chapel contains an elaborate stone altar by the firm of Pugin and Pugin depicting the Seven Dolours, incorporating a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary and a brass tabernacle door depicting a vulning pelican. The aisles feature painted dado panelling and several elaborate altars, including one to Our Lady of Good Counsel, also by Pugin and Pugin. The altars to St Walburga and St Theophila are likewise attributed to the same firm. Stained glass windows are by Hardman and Co. The altar has green marble columns and a full-size carving of the Deposition inscribed "MALFAIT. 1850." It is raised on three steps of red marble, the lowest with elaborate glazed tiles.

Between the nave and nuns' choir stands an elaborate stone reredos or altar screen incorporating a central statue of the Holy Child Jesus and tabernacle designed by Cuthbert Pugin, with two ornamental metal gates. The nuns' choir features an elaborate arch-braced ceiling with painted boards and elaborate choir stalls with fretted wooden canopies. The fronts of these stalls display elaborate 17th or 18th-century carved wooden panels of cherubs and pelicans, probably of Continental origin. The vestry contains built-in Gothic-style vestment cupboards and lamp racks.

The chapel's complex history began in 1834 when the convent site was purchased by the Reverend John Jones with a bequest of £10,000 from Lady Stanley of Puddington. Funds were raised for a Roman Catholic church, priest's house, and convent. Plans from circa 1834 by architect Charles Parker survive showing two ambitious Italianate-style schemes for a church and convent, each with a central church featuring columns and an elaborate clock tower. Neither was adopted, though Parker's Italianate influence appears in diluted form in the west end and loggia of the convent building itself.

A church or chapel was being constructed on the site by 1837, probably within the convent building, but by 1839 a Gothic design was being proposed instead. A Gothic-style church was commenced with only the outer walls completed to the top of the aisle windows, buttresses, and the entrance to the south porch. It remained incomplete between circa 1850 and 1856, as shown in a contemporary photograph. It is believed to have been commenced by Augustus Welby Pugin; "The Builder" journal of 1850 references Pugin's drawing of "St Leonard's College chapel rood screen" exhibited at the Royal Academy that year.

The Irish Sisters of Charity rejected the Reverend Jones's offer of accommodation, but in 1848 the newly formed teaching order, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, founded by Cornelia Connelly, moved to the convent at St Leonards. Plans to complete the chapel by William Wilkinson Wardell, who was constructing buildings on the site between 1846 and at least 1856, were abandoned. Designs by Goldie and an unknown Scottish architect were also rejected. The convent refectory served as a chapel between 1850 and 1868 until Edward Welby Pugin completed the chapel in 1869. While shortening the earlier church, he preserved the exterior of the retained sections exactly as they had been left. Work continued after the chapel's consecration in October 1868. The carved corbels were not installed until 1874. The altar of St Walburga in the north aisle contains a tabernacle with phials of her oil. The altar of St Theophila in the south aisle commemorates a virgin martyr whose bones were found in the Catacombs and presented to the Society in 1855, where they reposed in a reliquary beneath the altar. The east window was completed in 1872 but its stained glass was replaced in 1950 following bomb damage. The reredos and altar screen were installed in 1874 with a tabernacle designed by Cuthbert Pugin. Choir stalls were installed by 1876 but may have been replaced in 1886. The organ was added in 1881.

This chapel represents an intact survival of exceptional quality, notable for its altars and reredos by Pugin and Pugin, stained glass by Hardman and Co., marble and tilework, painted walls, and painted choir ceiling. It is also a rare survival of a Roman Catholic chapel retaining a nuns' choir, reflecting earlier forms of liturgy and devotional practice.