OUR HISTORY

The History of the Church
The catholic story of the present buildings starts in 1875. Bishop Clifford of Clifton wanted to set up a mission in Wells where there were some 30 Catholics but no church or resident priest. Up to this time the nearest priest was at Shepton Mallet who perhaps came to Wells occasionally, to say mass in a private house, hear confessions, baptise children etc. The Bishop heard that a Carmelite Community at Plymouth, originally from Lanherne in Cornwall. With the permission of the Bishop of Plymouth he therefore invited the nuns to Wells, and set about finding a suitable house to serve as a convent. In March of that year he wrote to the Mother Prioress "It seems to me that Providence has put in our way the very thing you require. The late Bishop of Bath and Wells did not like to reside in the episcopal palace at Wells because he considered it was damp, so he took a house in the town which has a large garden attached to it. When he died his widow continued to reside there, and she having died recently the place is for sale." The nuns agreed, and the property was purchased anonymously through solicitors, since as the Bishop wrote “if once it were suspected that the place is wanted for Catholics or nuns there would be an end to all transactions.”

Thus it was that the Community took possession of the house and grounds then called "The Vista" in Chamberlain Street. A large room served as the chapel. The first mass was said in the new Convent by Bishop Clifford on 16 July 1875 - very appropriately the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Two years later, in the Spring of 1877, the foundation stone of the present church was laid in the grounds of the convent. The architect was Charles Hansom, who was also the first architect of Downside Abbey. At this time the church consisted of no more than the present nave. The body of the church was built at the expense of Mr.Mercer of Wigan, a relative of one of the young nuns, Sister Mary Xavier of the Holy Ghost. Mr Mercer had stipulated that the church should be of a style suitable for a cathedral city. The architect had therefore based his design “chiefly on a wayside chapel in Norfolk”, as the Wells Journal put it. This seems to have been the Slipper Chapel at Walsingham which it resembles very closely. These days the Slipper Chapel is restored and very much in use, but what is astonishing is that in the 1870s it was merely a farm building, and had not been used as a chapel since the Reformation - Walsingham had not then been rediscovered. The church in Wells was opened on the Feast of St.Teresa of Avila (15 October) in that same year and dedicated to SS Joseph & Teresa, the two Patrons of the Carmelite Order.

10 years later, in 1888, it was enlarged by the addition of the current sanctuary with a new choir for the nuns leading off to the left where the large arch now is. At that time it was a solid wall with an opening containing the traditional Carmelite grille. There was a small window on the altar side of this grille through which the nuns received communion, while at the same time being shielded from the view of the congregation by a small curtain. The church was consecrated on 31 July 1890.

Over the years, with the decrease in the number of vocations, the nuns decided that they had to amalgamate with another convent. So it was that in 1972 the Sisters left Wells, to join with the Carmelite Convent in Darlington. The convent buildings in Wells were sold and converted into flats. But the Sisters very generously paid for the major alterations to the church, including the conversion of their choir into the present side aisle of the church, and making the 'normal' entrance into the church by way of the present porch and vestibule so as to remove it a little from the traffic noise of Chamberlain Street. This provided more seating for the growing congregation which was most welcome, and accounts for the rather odd shape which does tend to divide the church in two.