Pre-Reformation Background

    Surrounding St Dominic's Church and within its parish boundaries are the remains of a number of medieval places of worship built by clergy, parishioners and benefactors who were part of an English Church fully in communion with the See of Rome. The churches we know today as St James at Dursley and St John the Evangelist at Slimbridge retain considerable pre-Reformation features. The latter has been described as 'Probably the best example in the County of the Early Gothic style of the C13'. Other churches with medieval features are St George's Upper Cam, St Martin's North Nibley and St Cyr's Stinchcombe. St George's was rebuilt in 1340 by Thomas, Lord Berkeley, supposedly 'in expiation of Edward II's murder'. All three churches have been altered and partially reconstructed during the nineteenth century. Of the ancient church of St Bartholomew at Coaley, only the fine tower has survived. Two churches were totally demolished during the last century. In 1779 Rudder, the County historian, described the old church at Owlpen as 'very small and has a low spire at the west end', whereas the earlier St Giles' Uley 'has no aile .... and a low embattled tower'. Rudder also refers to pre-Reformation chapels at Langley Hill, Stinchcombe, and at Cambridge, but neither of these has survived.

    No religious houses existed in the immediate locality although before the dissolution of the monasteries the Benedictines of Leonard Stanley Priory were patrons of Cam and Uley parishes. Similarly Coaley living was held by St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, and prior to the year 1475 also the living of Dursley. In that year the title of Rector of Dursley was linked with the Archdeaconry of Gloucester so from that date the Rectors were non-resident and Dursley was served by a succession of assistant curates. Many of the Rectors were influential men, five of them becoming bishops during the period 1475-1540. Three rectors of Slimbridge also became bishops including Oglethorpe who was deprived as Bishop of Carlisle for not accepting Queen Elizabeth I's ecclesiastical reforms. The parish clergy were also supplemented by the chaplains of the various chantry chapels which existed prior to the Reformation period. Two chantry chapels existed in Dursley Parish Church and two in Slimbridge parish.

    Dursley was within the Diocese of Worcester before 1541 when the former Abbey of St Peter at Gloucester became the Cathedral Church of a new county-sized diocese. James Brooks (1554-1558) was the only Bishop of Gloucester to be in communion with the Holy See although on his death a successor was nominated by Rome.

From Queen Elizabeth I Until The Reign Of Queen Victoria

    There is no evidence of any resistance in the Dursley area to the liturgical and other reform of the Elizabethan Church. Unlike the Forest of Dean where influential families resisted these changes, paid fines and supported the illegal activities of Catholic priests, there would appear to be no parallel movement in south Gloucestershire. The main Catholic family in this area was the Poyntz of Iron Acton Court and Tockington Park. Sir Nicholas Poyntz had earlier built Newark, near Ozleworth, with stone from Kingswood Abbey. Two members of this family left Gloucestershire to develop their religious life on the continent. Robert Poyntz (1535- ), the son of John Poyntz of Alderley, having studied at Oxford, set out for the Catholic university at Louvain. Rudder described him as a 'learned author and a great zealot for the Roman Catholic religion'. Mary Poyntz ( -1667) met her kinswoman, Mary Ward, at Tockington Park and went abroad with her to share in the eventual founding of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Connected to the Poyntz family were the Throckmortons of Tortworth. They were resident there for much of the sixteenth century and were related to the Throckmorton family of Coughton Court, a valiant Catholic recusant family.

    Mary Poyntz was not the only local pioneer in setting up conventual life for English ladies. Jane Berkeley (1550c-1616), Abbess of the Convent of the Glorious Assumption in Brussels, was the daughter of Sir John Berkeley of Beverston Castle. This abbey, set up by Lady Jane Percy, was one of the first English convents on the continent.

    The Blessed Richard Sergeant who was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1586 for being a Catholic priest, is believed to have been born at Stone, near Berkeley.

    Whilst these threads indicate that members of some of the wealthier local families clung to the old religion, little impact was made on the community as a whole. During the reign of the Catholic King James II, who passed through Nympsfield on his progress to Gloucester in 1687, an attempt was made to establish a proper Catholic mission in the City. However, the chapel was closed and the priest imprisoned during the 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 when the first attempt to give the general population freedom of conscience in religious matters was brought to an abrupt end.

    During the late 1770's Mass was probably celebrated at Thornbury castle and in 1782 a Franciscan priest from Perthyre, near Monmouth, regularly celebrated Mass at Gloucester.
Ten years later a proper chapel was erected at Gloucester, followed by one in Cheltenham in 1810.
    In 1838 a chapel was opened in the former Swan Inn at Chipping Sodbury by Mrs. Sarah Neve, who was a Catholic and  widow of the Vicar of Old Sodbury.
The Passionists arrived at Woodchester in 1846, however some suggest that Mass may have been celebrated at Nympsfield in 1842.

    The story of Dursley's Catholic church really begins with the return of the Dominican Order to the Cotswold's after a break of 300 years. In 1845 a recent convert, William Leigh, purchased an estate at Woodchester. Leigh built the Church of the Annunciation at Woodchester in 1846, he invited first the Passionists and later the Dominicans to develop the area, opening a mission at Nympsfield in 1848. The Dominicans established their novitiate at Woodchester, and in 1855 built a church in Stroud. 

    In 1860 the Franciscan nuns newly arrived in Woodchester had opened a Poor School for girls, and a night school for factory girls. These schools also made converts. In Stroud, according to the visitation records, there were 200 Catholics, of whom 140 were converts. Dursley is listed as possessing a workhouse, in which there were no Catholics!

    The Catholics in this part of Gloucestershire therefore, at the time of the building of St Dominic's, were largely descended from the converts made by the Dominicans in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, although of course, increasing industrialisation had brought many newcomers into the area.

Early Plans

    It is known for certain that Mass was said in 1915 in a barn in Broadwell Lane, which was converted into a Catholic chapel for Belgian refugees, but after the departure of the foreigners the numbers dwindled to five and the mission was closed. Nothing more was done for Dursley until Father Denis Ryan came as parish priest to Nympsfield. In 1933 he arranged for Mass to be said in the YMCA hut in Long Street for about twenty-five people, at a rent of three shillings and sixpence each Sunday. Among the small congregation was Mrs. Millicent (Molly) Lister the wife of Robert Browning Lister who was to become a considerable benefactress and fund-raiser for the new church.   In 1934, Fr Denis Ryan was succeeded at Nympsfield by Father James Murtagh, and it was he who began seriously to consider the building of a church in Dursley. Already in September 1933 Mrs. Lister had written to Fr Ryan of the possibility of a site on the Kingshill Road, belonging to a farmer called Hatherall of Blackboys Farm. Mrs. Lister began to organise fund-raising, with a Shamrock Ball, a fete in Woodchester Park, whist drives and other events. She liaised with the Evelyn Waugh at Piers Court to organise a garden party there in June 1938. She had no inherited money of her own, so her efforts were always directed at a community sharing in an enterprise. 

    Evelyn Waugh and his wife also made their contribution. Waugh was a convert and when he and his wife Laura moved to Piers Court, Stinchcombe in 1937 he was disgusted at the Mass Center in the YMCA hut, and supported local efforts, led by Mrs. Lister to raise money to build a church. He opened his house and grounds to the public. Nor did his support end with the completion of the church, for there is an undated letter from Waugh addressed to Father Collins (1951 - 1959) concerning another garden fete at Piers Court.

    Mrs. Lister also sought help from the Misses Leigh, and on Whit Monday 1938 Woodchester Park was thrown open to the public to raise funds. People came from all parts of the country to view the unfinished house, to listen to a lecture given by Waugh on the History and Associations of Woodchester Park and to dance on the lawn to piped music. The Shamrock Ball, held in March 1938 in the Lister Social Club, was organised by Mrs. Lister and patronised by a wide range of supporters from Stroud, Bristol, Bath and even further a field. The Ball was held under the patronage of the Countess of Westmoreland, Lady Gunston, Lady Tubbs and Captain and Mrs. W.F.Eyre.

    The site was bought, and on Saturday, September 3rd 1938 Bishop Lee laid the foundation stone in the presence of Fr Murtagh, two friars from Woodchester and a monk from Cheltenham. The Bishop placed the new church under the protection of St Dominic in recognition of the good work done in the area by the Dominican friars. The church was to cost two thousand six hundred and eighty nine pounds, thirteen shillings and five pence, the architect's fee being one hundred and thirty-five pounds. The days when Catholic churches had to be hidden from public view and their foundation stones laid at 5 o'clock in the morning, (as happened at St Joseph's, Weston-s-Mare' in 1858), were long gone.

The Opening of the Church

    The church was opened officially on February 26th 1939 by the Bishop, in the presence of Monsignor Long, (Administrator of the Pro-Cathedral), Dr Rea the Bishop's secretary, and Fr Murtagh. Two hundred people packed into the church, including the sisters from Nympsfield. The Bishop, after thanking the Misses Leigh, the sisters, Fr Ryan and Fr Murtagh for their foresight and hard work, expressed his admiration for the people of Dursley who had raised so much money for their new church.
Mrs. Lister described the opening Mass to a friend:
I am pleased with the church - it is really lovely. Very simple and with comfortable benches instead of those beastly chairs. His Lordship was in great form and gave a very good address. Church was packed. I officiate as godmother to Wigmore's youngest child this afternoon. It will be the first christening in the new church.
Father Murtagh wrote to the Bishop, probably in March 1939, enclosing some interesting statistical details:
'I have 200 Catholics, children and adults in Dursley and district. Church is well filled on Sundays. 35 attend Mass on holy days, 25 attend Benediction on Fridays and there is an attendance of 80 at Sunday Mass. The Sunday collection averages at £2.'

The War And Its Aftermath

    The new church was of course only a chapel-of-ease to the parish church at Nympsfield. The church stood empty all the week, with just one Mass each Sunday, celebrated by Father James Murtagh. The priest still resided at the Convent in the village and contact between the two communities remained much as before. The school had been a link between the two congregations and in April 1939 Mrs. Lister was appointed a governor of the school. Two months later Evelyn Waugh, who was also a school governor, started a debating class at St Joseph's School.

    The war years saw various changes to life in Dursley. Evacuees arrived from various places,
towards the end of  September 1939 Dominican nuns arrived to take up residence at Piers Court. According to Waugh they planned to bring 30 children, 2 parents, 6 nuns, a mistress and a priest. The nuns remained at Piers Court until September 1945.
A party of Italian prisoners of war was housed at Nibley House. John Richards of Nympsfield recalls Father Murtagh celebrating two Masses at Nympsfield each Sunday and one at Dursley before journeying to North Nibley for a midday celebration
Mrs. Lister became an Air Raid Warden spending sane of her time entertaining evacuee children. Although extremely active and ostensibly fit she suffered severe curvature of the spine. Later she moved to Bath on her own and took up war work driving for the Admiralty during the blitz.

   After the war Evelyn Waugh and his family returned to Stinchcombe until 1955 when they moved to Canbe Florey where he died eleven years later.
The Lister family moved for a time to Southampton. Sadly Mrs. Lister's health deteriorated and she died of Leukemia in a Bristol nursing have on Saturday 5th August 1950. Her funeral service took place at St Dominic's Church on Thursday 10th. 
The Dursley Gazette paid tribute to her, 'Mrs. Lister had many friends in mid Gloucestershire and to them all the news of the death of such a generous-hearted lady has come as a heavy blow'.
    During the autumn of 1949 Father Murtagh suffered a breakdown in health as a result of his punishing schedule during and after the war. He was compelled to resign from Nympsfield. For four years he acted as the resident Chaplin at More Hall Convent in Stroud. He died at the age of 52 and was buried at Woodchester Priory.

Post War

    So far, the congregation at St Dominic's had consisted of indigenous Gloucestershire Catholics or Irish immigrants. Dursley is a working town and most of its inhabitants get their living in the local firms, especially Listers, (now Lister-Petter Ltd), Cam Mills, Mawdsleys and others. As well as the local people, numbers of Irish worked on the building of Berkeley Power Station,
The end of the war brought great changes. In 1946 Listers decided to increase its workforce in Dursley by recruiting up to seven hundred Eastern Europeans who were then living in Britain as refugees. Many Poles were housed at the ex-RAF station at Babdown, seven miles from Dursley. Two years later a large group of Ukrainians was also employed at Listers.

    These men's stories often reveal a tale of almost unbelievably deprived childhood and youth, as Poland was caught between the German and Russian armies, and Ukraine was invaded by the Germans. Many were caught by the Russians and deported to Siberia, and some had joined the Polish army after the German invasion of Russia, traveling from Uzbekistan into Iran, and thence on through Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. Many Poles fought in Italy with the Eighth Army, and after the war came to Britain. Some had been sent to Siberia as children, moving on to Kenya, and eventually to England. A typical example, repeated many time was of Mr. Wally Milczarczyk. escaping from Poland through Romania, thence to France and on to Britain where he joined the First Polish Division, and fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. After the war he went to Chester where he met his Austrian wife, and they moved to Dursley after their marriage. Or Mr. Stephan Rubin escaped from Poland to Hungary, where he was interned, but managed to make his way through Yugoslavia, Turkey and Syria to Palestine where he joined the Free Polish Army. He fought in North Africa and was at Monte Cassino. After the war he settled in England where he married and came to Cam.
    These brave men and women now formed part of St Dominic's parish! As refugees they naturally hoped that one day they would be able to return to their beloved homelands, and were determined to hold on to their languages, their customs, their religion, their very identity - and yet so few have been able to return home The situation after the war was very confused in Eastern Europe with boundary changes, and, very soon, Communist governments that looked with great suspicion on those who had been out of the country and in touch with the West. It is a moving experience to visit the cemetery in Dursley, and to count among the Catholic graves the great numbers of Poles and Ukrainians who lie buried there.

    This new influx presented a new challenge. To meet it, Bishop Lee's successor, Bishop Joseph Rudderham, decided to appoint a resident parish priest to Dursley. In November 1949, 5 Jubilee Road was purchased for use as a presbytery, and Fr Murtagh's successor, a forty-nine year old convert from Anglicanism, was appointed. Father Littleton Alfred Powys came to Dursley in February 1950. He plunged himself into his work in the new parish. He did all he could to provide services that suited the needs of his scattered, hardworking parishioners. The boundaries dries of the parish had not yet been organised. The only Catholic schools in the area were St Joseph's Primary School at Nympsfield four miles away, and the two schools in Stroud eleven miles away. The only focus for Catholics in Dursley was the church itself. Fr Powys undertook a tight schedule every Sunday collecting people for Mass. All this hard work was paying off, the congregation was on the increase, and multicultural. As he wrote in 1951. I find now I have the following races [sic] in the Dursley district among my flock - Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Germans, French, Belgians, Swiss, Austrians, Maltese, Yugoslav, Spanish, Brazilians, Welsh, Irish, Scots and English.
    He had worked, (over-worked), in Dursley, and like his predecessors, Fr Denis Ryan and Fr James Murtagh, came nearly to the end of his strength. The Bishop appointed him to Peasedown St John, Bath.
    Fr Littleton Powys died in February 1954 at the age of fifty-two. He had been less than two years in Dursley, but he, in greater measure than his predecessors, (who had been in charge of Nympsfield as well as Dursley), laid the foundations of St Dominic's parish, and on his hard and devoted work others have built.

Into The Fifties and Sixties

    Fr Powys' immediate successor was Father Bartholomew Collins, aged thirty-five, who arrived in November 1951, and was to be eight years in Dursley. He is remembered by parishioners as tall, quiet and shy. It was Fr Collins who built the presbytery beside the church, and the parish hall. In 1954 the house at 5 Jubilee Road was sold for £2000, and a purpose built presbytery erected for £2500. The new hall cost £1500 to build (using voluntary labour), the balance being found by taking out a mortgage on the new presbytery. Everywhere it was a period of new building. The Catholic Church in England was growing rapidly, with a very high birthrate, a considerable influx of immigrants and refugees of whom a large proportion were Catholics and in the country at large (though not notably in Dursley) a large number of converts. Everywhere churches and schools were being built; forty-two new churches were built in the Clifton diocese during the two decades following the war. The financing of all this was dependent on the number of people who came to Mass on Sundays, and in those days numbers were increasing everywhere, though the majority of Catholics were working people and not well-paid.
    During the Sixties one third of all the children baptised in St Dominic's had foreign surnames, mainly Polish, Ukrainian or Italian. This proportion diminished only slowly in the Seventies, with the decline accelerating during the Eighties until now, in the Nineties only a small proportion of infants baptised have foreign names, though the number of those with Polish or Italian mothers is slightly higher. The older members of these communities have kept their distinctive languages, outlook and life-style. As one comes out of Mass, especially on a weekday, one hears Italian or Polish spoken all around. Both groups over the years have made their own contributions to the parish's social life, with special dishes or music on big occasions.

    Fr Collins' successor, Father Nicholas McCarthy, who arrived in December 1959. It was decided to rebuild the parish school at Nympsfield. This school, erected in 1900 by the Misses Leigh, and run by the Marist sisters, needed extensive modernising. The sisters agreed to fund the new building at the cost of £25,000. It could now be classified as Voluntary Aided. The Local Education Authority now provided a special coach to transport the Dursley children to Nympsfield as they numbered over a hundred. In the mid-Sixties two coaches were supplied.
Fr McCarthy also turned his energies to the general improvement of the church and property. The church was redecorated, the car park and paths resurfaced - all by voluntary labour - a new oil-fired heating system installed, and in 1964 plans drawn up to extend the sacristy and to build a parish office. He was a popular and kindly priest, particularly interested in the welfare of children and of the elderly, and a great support to those in trouble; but shy of the Polish community.
    In 1960 a branch of the Union of Catholic Mothers was inaugurated, attended by Mrs Maingot, the Diocesan President. This has proved a long enduring enterprise, as the U.C.M. is still active in 
St Dominic's nearly forty years later.
Father McCarthy left Dursley on 4th September 1965 to work in Warminster.

    Father Matthias McManus succeeded Fr McCarthy, and it fell to him to carry out the plans for the extension of the sacristy and the building of the parish office. He too was very popular - a homely man who mixed with everyone. His housekeeper Louise is also remembered for her kindness and friendly concern. This was a time of great expansion. The country was booming (the "Swinging Sixties" ), and Dursley itself was enjoying full employment. An industrial town set in an agricultural area in the heart of the lovely Cotswold region, and before the widespread appearance of out-of-town supermarkets, had many advantages. As the demand for goods increased, local firms developed, more people moved into the area, and this too had its effect on the Catholic community. During his five years at St Dominic's Fr McManus baptised an average of 21 babies each year; he conducted 52 marriages (ten a year), and prepared 59 candidates for Confirmation, showing the high proportion of young families living in the district. It was a busy time for the priest, and it was also a period of very great change in the Catholic Church as a whole, for it was the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) - a Council which was to reflect the seismic changes in the twentieth century's theological understanding, and to precipitate a crisis in the Church which is still in progress, a crisis in understanding of scripture, liturgy, tradition and structure, and of the very nature of the Church itself.
    The liturgical changes following the Council were introduced gradually in Dursley. Mass was said wholly in English from Advent 1969, but other signs of upheaval were not yet much felt in this corner of Gloucestershire. Fr McManus, like most of his fellow clergy, was too busy in his scattered parish with day-to-day calls upon his time to introduce many new, and possibly unwelcome, practices. The parish continued to grow numerically, but the inherent problems of geographical, social and national diversity remained.

The challenge of the Seventies

    In 1970, Fr McManus was succeeded by Father Patrick McGovern, who was to preside over St Dominic's for the next fifteen, very important years. He is remembered as a remarkably independent character, tall and shy, but a great joker. He was strict about behaviour and reverence in church - "not good with children," - though some families who knew him well found that their children related easily to him. To those who were on his wavelength he would send jovial Christmas cards, but others remember little of him apart from his strictness in church. He did his own gardening, and was seen as rather aloof by many people, though he seems to have mellowed in later years.
    After the great boom and promise of the Sixties, the years following the oil crisis of 1973 began a period of decline in Dursley as well as in the country at large. The influence of Listers lessened, employment patterns changed, the housing market rocketed. All this left a small town vulnerable. Fewer people worked locally, commuting increased and changing living standards inevitably affected the churches too. The upheavals of the Sixties had left their mark. Fewer people went to church, fewer people taught the Faith to their children, and, most significantly for a community which had trusted too much perhaps to its ability to "outbreed its rivals," the Catholic birth rate, nationally, halved between 1965 and 1975.

    The baptismal figures at St Dominic's reflect this accurately enough, averaging in the Seventies 15 Baptisms per year, in the Eighties 12 per year. Marriages also decreased from forty in the early Seventies to half that number in the early Eighties, revealing an aging community, the increasing alienation of the young from the Church and the growing habit of postponing both marriage and childbearing until the mid-thirties. The Polish community had aged and intermarried; the Italians were no longer drawn to the district to find work, for there was none. The only (small) sign of growth was in the figures for conversion to Catholicism. Only one person was received into the Church during Fr McManus' time at St Dominic's; his successor, over a period of fifteen years recorded an average of somewhat less than one per year ( eleven in all). Before he left the parish for his retirement to Bath, Fr McGovern wrote to his parishioners (October 21st 1984):
    When a priest leaves parish life he is faced with the question of where to live. Being a kind of lone wolf with nowhere else to go, I have finally decided to accept one of our Diocesan Flats in Bath... No doubt I will feel it very strange for a time to be without a Church or Congregation to care for, or a garden to weed, but in time, God willing, I hope to be able to help my fellow priests. Now that I am being taken "off the beat" as it were I can say that I have one clame to fame. It is that of having been a priest for 47+ years. It is a long time to look back on and I am not so sure that I have made a very good job of it. But, whenever I become too conscious of my many failures I try to console myself with these words:
Don't look for the flaws as you go through life; It is easy enough to find them. It is wise to be kind, and sometimes blind, and look for the virtues behind them.

    Fr McGovern left Dursley in January 1985. His final parish Newsletter "Change of Address" makes entertaining reading:

Hold this space to your face and blow on it.

If it turns GREEN, see your doctor.
If it turns BROWN, see your dentist.
If it turns PURPLE, see a psychiatrist. 
If it turns RED, see your bank manager. 
If it turns BLACK, see your lawyer and make a will. 
If it remains the same colour, you are in good health and there is no reason on Earth why you should not be in church on Sunday.

He died in January 1992.

On-going Renewal

    The next priest was Father William Dee, who arrived in January 1985. He found the parish poorly supplied with essentials for church services: there was no chalice, the vestments were in a bad state of repair and new altar cloths were needed. The church, built in 1939, was increasingly in need of repair, redecoration and maintenance. The parish hall and grounds also needed constant attention, and fund-raising became almost a way of life. Enormous, often very imaginative, efforts were made; however, some projects were simply too expensive to be undertaken. For example, a Public Address system was turned down because of the cost; the car park needed serious attention, but the resurfacing could not be afforded for years and meanwhile various temporary solutions were tried; the presbytery as well as the church needed redecorating, the boiler needed repair and loose bricks were found on the apex of the church roof. Some of the work was undertaken by volunteers. New needs, however, rapidly surfaced: water was leaking into the oil tank in the parish hall and Fr Dee himself paid for new chairs and curtains for the hall.
    The financial situation throughout these years remained precarious. While so many repairs needed to be done, there were few covenants, and the church collection seldom brought in more than £100 in a week. 

    In May 1986 a parish finance committee was formed, and they reported that church repairs would cost £7000, and that Fr Dee's car was disintegrating. There were, however 44 covenants, and some people had increased theirs.
Despite all these efforts, the parish was never, at this time, able to raise sufficient funds to carry out all the work that needed to be done. In February 1987 Fr Dee told the council that St Dominic's was officially designated a Poor Parish, and so able to receive £400 from the Poor Missions Collection, and £400 from a London charitable organisation.
Fund-raising events were still frequent, as the parish hall needed rewiring, and in 1989 in honour of the Golden Jubilee of the church, the sacristy roof was retarred and guttering repaired, and a new baptismal bowl and paschal candle stand were ordered.
By 1981 St Dominic's had a representative on the Dursley Council of Churches, and regular reports were made to the parish council. Attempts to contribute to the joint magazine were defeated by the far flung boundaries of St Dominic's parish and the expense of distributing a magazine in such an area. Other very positive efforts were made towards working together. Lent groups were well supported. Fr Dee joined the Good Friday procession to Cam Peak in April 1986, and the following year a large group from all the churches gathered in St Dominic's on Spy Wednesday for the Stations of the Cross. The Women's World Day of Prayer annual service was held in St Dominic's in March 1989, and has been held on a rota basis ever since, drawing the local women's groups together for worship and for socialising. In October 1993 another ecumenical service was held in St Dominic's, with Vespers, undertaken by St James'), followed by Benediction (the province of the host church). St Dominic's was packed, and the experience much appreciated.

    Father Dee retired in September 1995, and his successor was a much younger man. Father Philip Smyth, was only thirty-one when he arrived in Dursley. Not since Fr Collins had Dursley had a pastor in his thirties. Fr Philip, an Ulsterman, had studied theology at Bristol University before training for the Priesthood in Rome. He spoke fluent Italian, and was in process of studying for his doctorate in Divinity. He was faced with serious problems with regard to the whole property. The church was now over fifty years old, and the poverty of the parish, as we have seen, had made ongoing maintenance difficult. Large schemes for repair and maintenance had had to be shelved; the contents of church and presbytery needed renewing or replacing, and the hall, built by voluntary labour in the 1950's, was now in need of attention. The parish treasurer informed him there was £20,000 worth of work to be done on roof, brickwork, etc! It was a depressing, and a worrying beginning. However the Diocese itself had begun to organise its finances, and was now in a much better position to help than it had been when Fr Dee had arrived ten years earlier.
    In November 1995 there was a burglary, so part of the restoration fund was used to install a security system for house, office and sacristy, with lighting and fencing round the property, with the happy consequence of lower insurance premiums!
    In June 1996 Fr Philip presented the parishioners with a full summary of work carried out on the hall and presbytery since his arrival the previous September. Rotten windows and two ceilings in the house had been repaired; redecorations completed, the kitchen fitted up, broken radiators replaced, central heating and hot water system restored, and essentials like crockery, cutlery, cooking utensils and bed linen purchased. The parish office that Fr McManus had designed had become over the years an extension to the sacristy, so there was no parish office except within the presbytery itself, allowing the priest little privacy. The parish office was now restored and equipped with telephone, answering machine and photocopier.
    All this effort and expenditure was jeopardised in January 1997 when the presbytery boiler caught fire, gutting the boiler recess and wrecking the kitchen, and a bedroom and bathroom overhead. Had it not been for the presence of mind of Mrs. Marie Dykes who discovered the fire by chance, switched off the gas and electricity supplies and raised the alarm. Mrs. Dykes was awarded the Bene Merenti medal in July 1997 for her courage and speedy response.