Our History
The church was the first ecclesiastical commission for Gerard Goalen (1918-1999), an architect trained at the Liverpool School of Architecture who in the early 1950s was employed with the Harlow New Town Development Corporation.
Frederick Gibberd’s masterplan for the New Town had received ministerial approval in March 1949. Churches were identified as playing an important part in the life of the new community, and sites were allocated to all the main denominations in each of the new neighbourhoods. Our Lady of Fatima is located in the major thoroughfare now known as Howard Way.
‘The planners expected the Catholic church to provide a monumental landmark facing onto the roundabout, and the clergy and their architects agreed…’ (Proctor, 2014, 289). Fr Francis E Burgess, a priest of the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception, had been put in charge of the new parish in 1953. Goalen was recommended to him by Gibberd: ‘He would design a building which would look well and would fit into the overall scheme’ (quoted in Proctor, 2014, p. 289). Fr Burgess found in Goalen an architect who shared his passion for modern design and liturgical reform; at Liverpool, Goalen’s thesis project had been for a modern pilgrimage church, inspired by Auguste Perret’s church of Notre Dame at Raincy, near Paris (1922-3), a design he showed to Burgess.
Goalen produced a floor plan in 1953 and full designs in 1954. A model of the new church was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1956. Goalen’s design was informed by his research and travels on the Continent, where he visited notable examples of advanced liturgical design. As well as Notre Dame de Raincy he took inspiration from Karl Moser’s St Anthony, Basel (1926), another church notable for its skeletal frame of exposed concrete and large areas of coloured glass.
Our Lady of Fatima was one of the earliest examples in England of a church designed according to the principles of the liturgical movement, which sought to bring the priest and congregation closer together, allowing for full and active participation of the laity in the liturgy. On his Continental travels, Albrecht Dietz’s and Bernhard Grothe’s St Mauritius in Alt-Saarbrücken, Germany (then under construction), showed Goalen the possibilities of moving away from a traditional longitudinal plan in favour of more intimate and less hierarchical forms, again with exposed concrete structure and large areas of glass. He was also strongly influenced by the churches of Rudolf Schwarz, with their emphasis on the altar placed amidst the faithful. At Harlow, Goalen adopted a T-shaped plan, with the altar placed at the crossing and seating arranged around this on three sides in the nave and transepts.
The foundation stone was not laid until December 1958. 60% of the wall space was to be covered with glass, but the choice of glass maker was not made until quite late in the process, after building work had started. In January 1959, Fr Burgess visited the studio of Dom Charles Norris at Buckfast Abbey, and ‘as a result of this visit and a subsequent one in company with the architect it was decided to entrust the monks with the formidable task of glazing the new church at Harlow in stained glass.
A variety of styles and techniques were available but there was never any doubt that the main glazing should be carried out in the modern French technique using 1in. thick slab glass set in concrete’ . This technique, known as dalle de verre, had been pioneered in France by Pierre Fourmaintraux (1896-1974), who came to England in the 1950s and was from 1956 chief glass designer for James Powell & Son (later Whitefriars); he is said to have taught Norris the technique. Harlow was Norris’s first venture with the technique and is possibly the first major UK example of its use. The nave windows depict the Tree of Jesse and the Marian apparitions at Fatima, Portugal (in 1917) while the transept windows depict the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary.
The church opened in 1960. When built, Our Lady of Fatima was praised as ‘one of the best new Catholic churches in the country’ (Clergy Review, 1963), although the placing of the font in a corner baptistery – at the insistence of the bishop – was criticised (the font has since been moved into the sanctuary, in accordance with standard post-Vatican II practice). The church features prominently in Robert Proctor’s monograph on Catholic church building between 1955 and 1975 and was one of ‘nine significant case study churches’ included in a travelling exhibition that accompanied that publication. ‘The building’s plan, liturgically innovative as it was, followed logically from the church’s urban situation. The T-shaped nave with identical arms and entrance gables was appropriate to the corner site, the church facing each direction from which it would be viewed and approached. The liturgical movement’s egalitarian principle of the gathered congregation was also politically allied to the egalitarian ideals of the New Town. Goalen’s church embraced the spirit of the New Town, providing the Catholic community with a space that connected their modern social and physical environment with their religious lives’ (Proctor, 2014, p. 291).
‘The Buildings of England’ describes Our Lady of Fatima as ‘the most significant church of the New Town and one of the first churches in England to be influenced by the Liturgical Movement’. It speaks of ‘the interior’s outstanding feature: brilliantly coloured dalle de verre stained glass…’ (Bettley/Pevsner, 2007, p. 455). The church was included in ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’ (English Heritage / RC Bishops’ Conference, 2007), a gazetteer of the best Catholic churches of England and Wales, and featured on the front cover of ‘100 churches, 100 Years’ (Twentieth Century Society, 2019), where it is described (on p. 84) as ‘a classic of mid-century aesthetics’. It is also included in ‘Fifty Catholic Churches to See Before You Die’ (Elena Curti, 2020), with the sub-heading ‘miracles in glass’.
The church was designed to seat 500, and the contract sum, as reported in the Catholic Building Review (1960), was £48,500 (Fr Burgess received considerable financial help from his parents).
After completing Our Lady of Fatima, Goalen was able to set up his own independent architectural practice. Several of his later churches are listed, including one (Church of the Good Shepherd, Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire) in Grade II* (List entry no. 1376603). Goalen also submitted designs for the completion of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Although unsuccessful in this, his Harlow design indirectly influenced the winning design. In the congregation at the solemn opening Mass in 1960 was Frederick Gibberd, and Archbishop Heenan of Liverpool later recalled (in his autobiography, ‘Crown of Thorns’, 1974, p.301) that ‘Mass was a new experience for Gibberd, a Congregationalist. He found himself wondering about liturgy and ritual.
Suddenly he remembered the competition for Liverpool Cathedral […] After Mass he hurried home and told his wife he intended to shut himself in his room until he had produced plans…’
Our Lady of Fatima was consecrated by Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood on 25 March 1985. In 2001 it was closed due to safety concerns over the degradation for the concrete surrounds to the dalles de verre windows frames and in 2003 it received an English Heritage / Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the conservation of the concrete window frames. The church was re-opened following conservation works in December 2005.
The presbytery and parish hall were built a few years before the church by Messrs Sperry & Starczewski and are not of special interest.
‘The Buildings of England’ describes Our Lady of Fatima as ‘the most significant church of the New Town and one of the first churches in England to be influenced by the Liturgical Movement’. It speaks of ‘the interior’s outstanding feature: brilliantly coloured dalle de verre stained glass…’ (Bettley/Pevsner, 2007, p. 455). The church was included in ‘A Glimpse of Heaven’ (English Heritage / RC Bishops’ Conference, 2007), a gazetteer of the best Catholic churches of England and Wales, and featured on the front cover of ‘100 churches, 100 Years’ (Twentieth Century Society, 2019), where it is described (on p. 84) as ‘a classic of mid-century aesthetics’. It is also included in ‘Fifty Catholic Churches to See Before You Die’ (Elena Curti, 2020), with the sub-heading ‘miracles in glass’.
The church was designed to seat 500, and the contract sum, as reported in the Catholic Building Review (1960), was £48,500 (Fr Burgess received considerable financial help from his parents).
After completing Our Lady of Fatima, Goalen was able to set up his own independent architectural practice. Several of his later churches are listed, including one (Church of the Good Shepherd, Woodthorpe, Nottinghamshire) in Grade II* (List entry no. 1376603). Goalen also submitted designs for the completion of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Although unsuccessful in this, his Harlow design indirectly influenced the winning design. In the congregation at the solemn opening Mass in 1960 was Frederick Gibberd, and Archbishop Heenan of Liverpool later recalled (in his autobiography, ‘Crown of Thorns’, 1974, p.301) that ‘Mass was a new experience for Gibberd, a Congregationalist. He found himself wondering about liturgy and ritual.
Suddenly he remembered the competition for Liverpool Cathedral […] After Mass he hurried home and told his wife he intended to shut himself in his room until he had produced plans…’
Our Lady of Fatima was consecrated by Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood on 25 March 1985. In 2001 it was closed due to safety concerns over the degradation for the concrete surrounds to the dalles de verre windows frames and in 2003 it received an English Heritage / Heritage Lottery Fund grant for the conservation of the concrete window frames. The church was re-opened following conservation works in December 2005.
The presbytery and parish hall were built a few years before the church by Messrs Sperry & Starczewski and are not of special interest.
