Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul

The Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul stands on Paternoster Row in Wolverhampton, between the City Council buildings and the Ring Road St Peters — a Grade II* listed Roman Catholic parish church built from 1826 to 1828 to the designs of Joseph Ireland, and physically joined to Giffard House, the Georgian town house that is now its presbytery. Together they preserve the story of "Little Rome": the Catholic Wolverhampton that endured persecution, execution and riot through three centuries of recusancy, and twice in the twentieth century fought off the demolition of its mother church.

The Giffard family, Catholic recusants of Chillington Hall, used their Wolverhampton house as a home for spinster and widowed sisters and daughters, who cared for priests, monks and travelling Catholics through the penal years. The dangers were real. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, two Catholics were executed in High Green — now Queen Square — and the church still uses at Mass a Recusant Chalice from the English Civil War. In 1678, during the Titus Oates persecution under Charles II, two Jesuit priests were arrested in Wolverhampton: Father Gavan was executed in London and Father Atkins died in Stafford Prison; Peter Giffard was arrested but survived, while a local priest, William Ironmonger, was also executed. When the Catholic King James II fled in 1688 and William and Mary took the throne, rioters attacked the chapel in Giffard House and burnt the priest's vestments. Yet Catholic Wolverhampton persisted — the town was mockingly called "Little Rome" — sustained by the recusant gentry: the Giffards, the Levesons (pronounced "Looson") and the Whitgreaves. Bishop Bonaventure Giffard, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, was himself a son of Andrew Giffard and Catherine Leveson. The family owned two town houses, one in Cock Street (now Victoria Street) and one in Tup Street, now North Street — the site of the present presbytery.

The current Giffard House was built from 1727 to 1729 on the site of the older house, designed by Francis Smith of Warwick, one of the great master builders of the English Midlands. From 1804 to 1826 it was the home of Bishop John Milner, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District and one of the most influential English Catholic figures of his age. Milner died in the house, bequeathed money for the building of the church, and was buried in the orchard — where the Ring Road now lies; his remains rest today in the crypt, and his brass memorial, designed by Pugin, is in the nave.

The church grew from the house. The chapel began as a room at the rear, extended in 1743 and decorated in 1765, serving first the Giffard family and servants and then opening to other Catholic worshippers — which underpins the parish's claim that this is the oldest Roman Catholic church building in England, created during and just after the centuries of the English Reformation. In 1826 the chapel was extended to Joseph Ireland's Greek Revival design, and in 1828 the nave was completed and the church opened, the inauguration Mass attended by approximately sixty priests. Hidden behind surrounding buildings and approached only by an archway from the road, the church was famously secure: a letter of 1831, written in defence of one Ann Williams accused of attempted robbery at the church, declared in magnificent spelling that "As for Ennybody thinking to crack into that place, the might as well think of cracking into Newgate as there is no windows hall around this chapel... It is a thing impossable to think about getting into that place without being found out." The side chapels came later: the Sacred Heart Chapel (south) and the sacristy wing designed by Edward Goldie in 1901, and the Lady Chapel (north) by Sandy and Norris in 1928.

Twice in the twentieth century the church nearly vanished. In 1962 Father Kavanagh discovered that Wolverhampton Council wished to demolish it for redevelopment — Councillor F. Clapham, chair of the Planning Committee, wanted a new Civic Centre on the site, with a replacement church and school in Whitmore Reans. Kavanagh organised a committee of Catholics and non-Catholics alike, and the planning application was defeated. Then from 1967 the Ring Road was driven through the neighbourhood: everything nearby that could be demolished was demolished, and though the parish was assured the graveyard was safe, forty-two bodies were disinterred and moved to Jeffcock Road so a new retaining wall could be built. Dry rot was found in the church roof; Father Molloy was forced to say Mass in the school hall, and the Archdiocese itself applied for a demolition order, judging repair too costly and doubting that worshippers would cross the Ring Road that now cut the church off. The proposal was finally rejected in 1982 by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine. Grants followed from the Council and English Heritage, with the Birmingham University librarian Anthony Nicholls as appeal secretary and Peter Giffard of Chillington as involved as his ancestors had been, under Father Joyce and Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville of Birmingham.

By 2006 the church needed complete refurbishment, funded in large part by a bequest from the Armstrong brothers. Father Patrick Daly organised a finance committee under Brian Middleton — and then Mrs Betty Green when Middleton fell ill — with Bill Finnegan coordinating the craftsmen and Stephen Oliver as architect. Today the parish celebrates one Sunday Mass at 10.15am, and Giffard House serves as both presbytery and home of the University of Wolverhampton's Catholic Chaplaincy, whose Catholic Society meets there every Tuesday evening in term time. The chalice of the recusants is still raised at the altar; the house of the Giffards still shelters the church it hid for centuries — "Little Rome," besieged by Ring Road instead of rioters, and still standing.