ST. MARIE'S CHURCH

Rugby, Warwickshire

St. Marie's is Rugby's main Roman Catholic Church. In the early 1800s there were no Catholic churches in Rugby and Captain John H.W. Hibbert became fed up with a walk of nine miles to Wappenbury to worship . For a while the local Catholics celebrated mass at Captain Hibbert's home, but eventually this became a problem. Interestingly, Captain Hibbert was not, himself, a Catholic but his wife was.

In the 1870s Captain Hibbert bought land in Dunchurch Road specifically for the construction of a Catholic Church. He employed A.W.N. Pugin to design the Church and it was built in the Early English Style by the classicist Pugin.

Once more the Church proved to small and so Pugin's son, Edward, was employed to increase the size of the Church. It was at this point that the massive spire was added which is supposedly the tallest in Warwickshire (although this may not include the spire of the old Cathedral in Coventry).

Photo - Andrew J. Müller

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2018