The Oratory of St Peter

During the English Civil War (1642-1649), a heavily Puritan East Anglia exiled many Catholics. Two prominent martyrs from this turbulent time are St Henry Morse, the ‘priest of the plague’ (d. 1645), and St Alban Roe (d. 1642). By the 18th Century, East Anglian Catholics were in danger of dying out despite a small influx of Irish immigration. However, British attitudes began to change with the French Revolution: the public was sympathetic to the priests, monks, and nuns persecuted by the revolutionaries.

In 1829, Catholics were finally granted civil rights and in 1840, East Anglia became part of the Eastern District, with a Bishop in Northampton. With the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, this became the Diocese of Northampton. Sometime in the late 1870s, Fr Arthur Job Wallace, then Parish Priest of St Mary’s Ipswich, celebrated the first post-Reformation Mass in Southwold.