of Persons And Places

A Roving Causerie
By G. E. ANSTRUTHER
Golden jubilee honours fall, next Tuesday, to two of Ushaw's many alumni in Englaud's northern field, the Rev. Michael Haggerty and the Rev. Frederick Savory. Both sides of the Tyne come into the celebrations for the eveet, Fr. Haggarty's work lying at Seaham Harbour, in county Durham, while Fr. Savery has St. George's at Bell's Close, on the Northumberland bank.
To these veterans in priestly service this column offers respectful felicitations and good wishes on behalf of its writer and its readers,
Deptford's history includes record of the time when that district gave employment to Peter the Great; arid certainly the late Canon James Mahoney, whose loss made melancholy tidings in the CATHOLIC HERALD last week, will not go down in memory, in the local annals, as James the Less. To think of Dr. Mahoney's work at Deptford is not to dwell only upon the busy priest who geve more than twenty years of his life to religious ministrations in the parish, but also to bear in mind a social worker by whose efforts the entire population had service.
Priests, we know, have no place in Parliament, but in London's municipal counsels representation has included the cloth. Deptford's people elected James Mahoney to the L.C.C., on the Labour ticket, many years ago. They knew the man; they had already seen something of his public work; they appreciated his qualities; they trusted to him, and they were not let down. There will be long and grateful recollection, in this Thames-side area, of the Catholic priest's initiative and labours when, on a bad day, Father Thames became a hostile invader, sweeping hundreds of families into distress. A memorial of some sort is practically certain to hand down, in Deptford, the memory of the lost worker.
. . 1hs slaty years since. In the autumn months of 1878 the faith made a stride, in provision, by the opening of a public chapel for Hannon. Two years previously the Hon. Colin Lindsay and Lady Frances Lindsay, converts both, had returned to the district to found a mission, privileged to have a domestic chapel at their house. at Doer Park. The 1878 development was the adaptation of a former brewery at the house as a devotional chapel, which building served the Catholics of Hannon for nearly twenty years, when there was a migration to Church Hill. From that humble one-time brewhouse centre, a priest went out and restored the Mass at Sidmout'n.
The joy of the small flock of faithful sixty years ago may be imagined, the thankfulness with which they assembled for the opening of what was virtually a new church. Anyone who may have been present that day, in youth, and still lives to look hack upon the ceremony, has cause to rejoice today at what would perhaps have seemed, in 1878, the coming of wonders.
In Honiton the new church of the Holy Family, opened only last year, is one of the most prominent buildings in the town; its opening day preceded by a week the opening of the new Church of the Sacred Heart at Seaton, while a few miles across country, at Ottery St, Mary, the new chapel of St. Anthony, opened three years ago, is proof of further progress in church building in the West. All these centres are served by the Augustinian Recollect .Fathers. As to Sidmouth, the fine church of the Precious Mood which rose in that resort in recent years is a handsome addition to Devon's places of worship.
All this: and but sixty years ago there Was no more than the brewhouse chapel at Honiton for the entirety of this area of many miles. But there is yet another item to set down in the tale of progress in church building in Devon. Exeter has a " live wire" in the Rev. Thomas Barney, one of our progressive forces in the West Country; his Good Friday procession through the streets is an event in the city's religious doing. Fr. Barney has just added a church to Exeter's Catholic resources, the church of St, Thomas. Thus, in a centre which less than a decade ago had but one church, there are now three.
The pilgrim in search of post-war Devon churches, in fact, will find plenty to reward his footsteps and to console his heart. Ashburton, Yelverton, Plympton, BudIeigh Salterton: these are among the places awaiting to convince him that in the matter of church building " the West's awake."
Reaching its centenary as a borough, last Tuesday, Bolton, we will trust, had a kindly thought for its centenarian institutions, for such still existing buildings or .foundations as were there to smile upon its municipal birth a hundred years ago. Among these is the Catholic mission of SS. Peter and Paul in Pilkington Street. The church of this, the mother-parish, is not what it was in 1838, and if the fire demon had had more time for his malevolent visitation, some years back, there would have been yet a further re-building. But when Bolton became a borough, Holy Church had already set her outpost in the town by nearly forty years.
A salute of homage is due to this old Centre in the week of municipal recollection. (The pen refrains from writing " rejoicings." because the spectacular glories of the centenary were got through, by anticipation, some weeks ago). Material in abundance must await any local historian who will busy himself with the
chronicles of SS. Peter and Paul's. The mission came into being at a time when Catholic Emancipation was a dream, hardly a hope, and it served a cengregation whose successors now spread their devotions over close upon, a dozen parishes in the Bolton area,