St George's Roman Catholic Church, Taunton

The Church of St George is a Roman Catholic church in Taunton, the county town of Somerset, dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. It was the second Catholic church to be built in Taunton after the Reformation, replacing the much smaller St George's Chapel, and it stands as a fine monument to the revival of the Catholic faith in a town where, only a few generations earlier, Catholicism had all but vanished. A Grade II* listed building in the Gothic Revival style, with a tower modelled on the famous Perpendicular towers of Somerset, St George's is one of the most handsome churches in Taunton and the heart of the town's Catholic community.

After the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the old faith had almost died out in Taunton. An 1824 publication, The Protestant's Companion, claimed that before the nineteenth century "there were no Papists in Taunton" — a slight exaggeration, but one that captured how thoroughly Catholicism had been suppressed. The revival began in 1787, when a Mission Rector was sent to the town, and in 1791, when Catholic chapels were at last legalised, he registered a chapel in a house on Canon Street. A permanent church, St George's Chapel, was built around thirty years later, by which time there were thought to be some 120 Catholics in Taunton; the chapel could seat 200. But the Catholic population continued to grow, and by the 1850s the chapel was no longer big enough for the congregation.

The building of a new and far larger church was made possible by the generosity of the town's Franciscan Convent, which in 1858 purchased a plot of land adjacent to its own and donated it for the building of a church, rectory and school. The rector of Taunton at the time, the Reverend John Mitchell, had grand ambitions, including the dream of "a spire to rival that of Salisbury". Funds were raised by various means — including a bazaar and a lottery advertised in 1858 for "building the tower and spire", though the lottery was promptly banned by the police. The first stone was laid on 19 August 1858 by the Right Reverend William Clifford, Bishop of Clifton, and the church was built to a design by the architect Benjamin Bucknall — a notable Gothic Revival architect, translator of the great French theorist Viollet-le-Duc, and associate of the celebrated Woodchester Mansion.

The church was opened just under two years later, on 24 April 1860, with great ceremony: William Vaughan, Bishop of Plymouth, led the Mass, while two other bishops, Francis Amherst of Northampton and James Brown of Shrewsbury, gave sermons through the day — a gathering of prelates that reflected the importance of the occasion in the rebuilding of Catholic life in the West Country. The rectory was completed shortly after the church, and a school was opened in 1870, lessons having previously been given in a room behind the old St George's Chapel. Work on the tower continued over the following years, with further funds collected in 1875, though the project was marked by tragedy when, in 1876, one of the builders, George Toller, was killed after falling around a hundred feet from the scaffolding. Such was the slow and costly nature of the work that the church was not finally consecrated until 1912, more than half a century after it had opened.

Architecturally, St George's is a dignified example of the Gothic Revival, and its tower in particular bears a deliberate resemblance to the great Perpendicular church towers for which Somerset is famous — the soaring, richly decorated towers of Taunton's own St Mary Magdalene and St James, and of churches across the county. In adopting this local style, Bucknall rooted the new Catholic church firmly in the architectural tradition of Somerset, making it a worthy companion to the medieval churches of the town. Today St George's continues as one of the two Catholic churches in Taunton, alongside the Church of St Teresa, and remains an active and well-loved place of worship.

The church stands in the centre of Taunton, the county town of Somerset, set in the fertile vale of Taunton Deane between the Quantock, Blackdown and Brendon Hills. The town's great medieval churches, the Norman Taunton Castle — home to the Museum of Somerset and the scene of the trials following the Monmouth Rebellion — the County Ground, home of Somerset County Cricket Club, and the green expanse of Vivary Park are all close by, while the surrounding hills and the wider Somerset countryside, with the Somerset Levels and the coast at Minehead, lie within easy reach.

From the near-extinction of Catholicism in Taunton after the Reformation, through the mission of 1787 and the building of the first St George's Chapel, to the raising of the present church in 1858–60 on land given by the Franciscan Convent, its tower modelled on the great Somerset towers, and its long-delayed consecration in 1912, the Church of St George gathers the story of Catholic revival in the West Country into one building. A Grade II* listed church at the heart of the county town, it remains the principal Roman Catholic church of Taunton — a Gothic Revival landmark and a sign of the enduring faith of its community.