Saint Peter’s Church, Hinckley

Ther centrepiece of the oldest parish in the Diocese of Nottingham is the “new” St. Pater’s church built and dedicated in December 1993. This is the fifth church or chapel building to serve the Catholics in the town. The two chapels of the 1790s, the 1825 Priory and the 1958 church have not survived.

It was in 1759 that a Dominican priest, Father Matthew Thomas Norton OP came to reside in the area permanently. He followed in a missionary tradition dating back to the 1730s when the Turville family of Aston Flamville, kept a Dominican priest in hiding in the Manor House. Father Norton’s ministry encompassed penal times but the slight relaxation in the laws against Catholics, in the 1790s, allowed him to register an upper room and then a purpose-built chapel as places of worship. St. Peter’s took its name from the feast day on which Father Norton OP arrived in the town.

Again, local stalwart families, such as the Dawkins family at Sketchley, initially provided Father Norton OP with a roof over his head and in 1765 a house was built in Hinckley for him. The house was designated a priory in 1814, the first such Dominican Priory in England after the reformation of the mid-16th Century.

In 1825 a church and presbytery were built on land adjacent to Father Norton’s original chapel. This chapel lasted until 1976 but had been long outstripped by the growing needs of the Catholic population. A new church had been built in 1958/1959. The Dominicans relinquished their 255-year presence in the town in September 1989, although the Dominican Sisters maintained a convent and school at Stoke Golding until 2011.

The current church retains some of the features of the older 1958 building, including pews, Stations of the cross. The Tabernacle and the large Credo window, formerly of the high altar. The figure of Christ the Mediator, once adorning the front wall of the old church has been mounted on a plinth in the current church grounds. The Presbytery built in 1930 to house a Dominican community. It has since been modernised. Adjoining the current church and presbytery is the Parish Hall, designated as the Mary Forryan Centre, after a devoted and outstanding member of the church congregation.