Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs, St Leonards-on-Sea

The Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs is the Roman Catholic church of St Leonards-on-Sea, the elegant seaside resort that forms part of the Borough of Hastings, in East Sussex. It is a building of striking contrasts: behind a plain and almost austere Gothic Revival exterior, "as sparing as a friars' church", lies an interior of unexpected richness, covered with vivid early twentieth-century murals by Nathaniel Westlake. The third building used for Catholic worship in the resort, it is listed at Grade II for its architectural and historical importance, and remains the principal Catholic church of the parish of St Leonards-on-Sea and Hollington.

The town itself was the creation of James Burton, the builder and property developer who from 1828 laid out, on a stretch of wooded sloping land facing the English Channel, a high-class planned seaside community of houses, shops, hotels and markets that within a few years rivalled its ancient neighbour Hastings. Catholic worship was soon provided in the growing town. The Reverend John Jones, Honorary Chaplain of the Bavarian Embassy in London, received under the will of Lady Barbara Stanley a generous bequest of money, land and a house, all to be used for the benefit of Roman Catholics. From 1837 a group of Gothic Revival buildings was begun under the direction of the great architect A. W. N. Pugin, and a newly founded order of nuns, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, took up residence. Pugin began a convent chapel in 1848, completed only in 1869 by his son Edward Welby Pugin, while the convent refectory served in the meantime as a temporary chapel for both the sisters and the public.

As relations between the convent and the wider parish became difficult, a separate church for public worship was built nearby in 1866, on the west side of Magdalen Road, above the eastern portal of the railway tunnel near Warrior Square station. It was designed by Charles Alban Buckler, a Roman Catholic convert and one of the most distinguished Catholic architects of the early to mid-Victorian period. Founded in 1865 and opened for worship on 24 May 1866, it was consecrated in 1868 by Thomas Grant, Bishop of Southwark, and dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury — the martyred Archbishop Thomas Becket — and to the English Martyrs, the Catholics put to death during the Reformation. Its most notable feature was a large pietà carved in oak.

Disaster struck on 3 January 1887, when the church was destroyed by fire. Within two months a temporary "tin tabernacle" had been erected on the site so that worship could continue, and Charles Alban Buckler was again called upon to design a replacement. Construction began in 1888, the builder Edmund Boniface carrying out Buckler's design, and the new Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs opened to the public on 6 July 1889. Between 1908 and 1911 the interior was transformed by Nathaniel Westlake, who painted it with a range of vivid murals depicting scenes from the Bible. Much of the work was stencilled, but its sheer extent was unusual, and it is rare for such schemes to survive at all. By 1981 the murals had deteriorated so badly that whitewashing them over seemed the only option, but enough money was raised for a full restoration, carried out by the artist Charles Camm, so that they survive in their colourful glory today.

Architecturally, the church is a fine example of Buckler's work. A committed medievalist who worked almost exclusively in the Early English Gothic style, he gave the church the trefoil and tall lancet windows, the multi-sided apse and the buttressing typical of that manner, building in ironstone and Bath stone. The plan comprises a six-bay nave with vaulted side chapels, a chancel with its own apsidal-ended chapels, a porch, sanctuary, narthex and a later mortuary chapel; there is no tower or spire, which gives the exterior its deliberately plain and devotional character. Within, the contrast could hardly be greater, for the walls and ceilings blaze with Westlake's painted figures — St Michael, the English Martyrs, the Hand of God above the chancel arch, saints and prophets, a Nativity and a Last Supper — complemented by stained glass attributed to Charles Eamer Kempe and the firms of Clayton and Bell and Hardman & Co. Among the original fittings are a carved organ case, a marble font depicting the Seven Sacraments, a matching pulpit carved with images of saints, and a Bath stone altar in the Lady Chapel.

The church was listed at Grade II by English Heritage in 2006, an architectural survey of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton having already noted that its remarkable interior decoration made it special. It is one of several listed churches in St Leonards-on-Sea, and today serves, together with the Church of the Holy Redeemer at Hollington, the Catholic parish of St Leonards-on-Sea and Hollington, within the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. Mass is celebrated each Sunday, and the church continues its life of worship as it has done for well over a century.

The church stands on Magdalen Road in St Leonards-on-Sea, a short distance from the seafront and the planned Regency town created by James Burton. The promenade and beaches, the neighbouring resort and old town of Hastings with its castle, fishing quarter and net huts, the cliffs of Hastings Country Park, the site of the Battle of 1066 at Battle Abbey, and the High Weald countryside are all within easy reach along this stretch of the Sussex coast.

From the Catholic revival begun under Pugin's direction, through the building of Buckler's first church in 1866, its destruction by fire in 1887 and its rebuilding in 1889, to the survival of Nathaniel Westlake's extraordinary murals, the Church of St Thomas of Canterbury and English Martyrs gathers the story of Catholic St Leonards into one building. A Grade II listed church whose plain exterior conceals an interior of glowing colour, it remains the living Catholic church of this fashionable Sussex resort.