The Catholic mission in Leek started in the early nineteenth century with Father Louis Gerard, a French missionary priest, who traveled from Cobridge in Stoke-on-Trent and ministered to the French former prisoners of war and the Irish textile workers. Mass was celebrated in a room in Pickwood Road. By the 1820s a house belonging to Mr. William Ward in King Street was used.
The first chapel was built at the corner of Fountain Street and Portland Street in 1828/29 under the direction of Father James Jeffries of Cheadle. In 1830 he built a presbytery adjoining the chapel and a resident priest was appointed in 1832. A Sunday School was established in 1844 and a day school was opened in 1845. In 1851 the congregation numbered 167 in the morning and 115 in the evening besides school children (the evening service would not have been mass).
By 1860 Father Joseph Anderson had come to Leek and he invited the sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Navan in Ireland to take over the running of the school. By 1863 the sisters moved into a house in King Street.
Father Anderson moved that same year to a cottage adjoining the convent and a Mr. Henry Bermingham, the owner of the cottage gave the garden as a site for a new church. The new church of St. Mary in brick and stone was opened in 1864, it being in the Gothic style of William Sugden. From 1887 to 1935 this served as the Parish School and then up to 1990 the Parish Hall. It was destroyed by fire in the 1990s and the land was subsequently sold.
In 1884 Father Alfred Sperling was appointed as Parish Priest at Leek. He and his parents, John and Ann Sperling, were extremely wealthy and they purchased a site on Compton and proceeded to have built the present church in the new Gothic style. It was designed by Alfred Vicars of London. The church was built in Bath stone and sandstone and was opened in May 1887. Father Sperling, later Monsignor Sperling, lived in a house known as Broombank at the junction of Selbourne Road and Cheadle Road, some distance from the church. Father Charles Eagle built the present presbytery in the 1930s and Broombank was sold.
A new school in Cruso Street was built in 1935/36 consisting of five classrooms for the infants and junior children. In the post-WW2 scene the number of Catholics increased with the arrival of Polish ex-servicemen and by the 1950s the demand for places at the catholic school became so great that two additional classrooms were built in Selbourne Road some half a mile from Cruso Street. In 1976 St. Mary’s Nursery School was established - the first of its kind in the town.
By 1976 the Loreto sisters had to vacate their premises in King Street and move to a smaller house in Alsop Street. It was a sad day for the town and for the parish when, in 1979, the sisters retired from the school and left Leek. Their ministry in Leek had lasted 120 years. Mr Anthony Birks was appointed the first Headmaster at St. Mary’s School.
The departure of the sisters created a great vacuum in the parish, but by 1987 there were big celebrations for the one-hundredth anniversary of the church. Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville was the chief celebrant at the centenary mass.
It was with great joy that in June 2001 a number of parishioners attended the Episcopal Ordination of Monsignor Kieran Conry as fourth Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Mgr Conry was parish priest from 1988 to 1990 and began a restoration programme on the church and the house that was continued by his successor Father John Burns.
In 2002 the parish saw the return of the Loreto sisters. Sister Maria, formerly known as Mother Vincent de Paul, returned to join the life of the parish community.
The next major event in the life of the parish was the re-development of the school with the merging of the two sites to Cruso Street This was completed in 2005 and the Selbourne Road site sold to developers. With the completion of our Jubilee Project for the church building we pray that our place of worship will be consecrated to God.
In 2007 urgent repairs were found to be needed to the roof and structure of St. Mary’s Church building. The estimate is in the region of £200,000. The parish has set up a ‘Building Fund’ into which the proceeds of fund raising activities and donations are gratefully accepted.
All material copyright (c) 2008 St Mary's Church Leek Registered Charity No. 234216
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