The town's
first permanent place of Roman Catholic worship was founded in 1861 next to a
friary whose members, from the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, had been invited
to the area by a wealthy local family of Catholic converts. Crawley's
transformation from a modest market town to a rapidly growing postwar New Town
in the mid-20th century made a larger church necessary, and in the late 1950s
the ecclesiastical architect Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel was commissioned to
build a new church. The friary closed in 1980 and has been demolished, but the
large brick church still stands in a commanding position facing the town
centre. English Heritage has listed the building at Grade II for its
architectural and historical importance.
All photos by Ian Mulcahy. E-mail crawleyoldtown@gmail.com
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