A Brief History
This is a short summary of more than a hundred years of the history of St Benet’s parish. In addition, a Guide to St Benet’s, describing the structure of the church, its layout, statues and windows, can be found at the rear of the church.
St Benet’s Minster
The parish of Beccles was established towards the end of the 19th century by the Benedictine monks of Downside Abbey, near Bath in Somerset. The land was provided by John George Kenyon, owner of the Gillingham Estate, who also established a second church, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, (OLPS) at Gillingham in Norfolk, about one mile outside Beccles. The area covered by the parish extended from Haddiscoe in the north to Brampton in the south, Barnby to the east and Kirby Cane to the west.
The Diocese of East Anglia was established by Pope Paul VI in 1976 and consists of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Formerly this area was part of the Diocese of Northampton (Established in 1850)
In the early years of the parish, towards the end of the 19th century, Downside was still a priory and Beccles was on the edge of a large rural district. The area had been served from a Benedictine ‘mission’, which was first located at Flixton Hall and then at St Edmund’s, Bungay.
The beginnings of St Benet’s Parish (‘Benet’ being the anglicised version of Benedict) is usually dated to the year 1889. The building of the Parish Hall (for the use of a new Catholic School) preceded the construction of the church. The parish church was designated a minster to indicate service to a community. Downside had been elevated to the status of an abbey in 1900, and St Benet’s was planned to be a priory with a community of monks, but this did not take place. However, there were successive communities of sisters serving the parish from new houses in Grange Road, including an orphanage (now St Elizabeth House) as well as convent buildings.
The land for the church and school, on the outskirts of Beccles, had been purchased and donated to the Benedictines by the owner of the Gillingham Estate, John George Kenyon. Thanks to the great generosity of several other donors, the minster was largely complete within ten years of the laying of the foundation stone in 1898 and consecrated in 1908.
The Parish was part of the Diocese of Northampton until 1976, when the Diocese of East Anglia was established; the division of responsibilities continued, with the Bishop overseeing spiritual activities and the abbot owning the land and the properties, and supplying our Priests.
In 2021, faced with a fall in vocations, the Downside community decided they could no longer maintain the supply of priests to their two Suffolk parishes. They therefore agreed to transfer all the property and parochial responsibilities to the Diocese of East Anglia, and this was finally effected late in 2023. The Downside. community have now left their monastery, and live – temporarily at least – at Buckfast Abbey.
The Downside website is at https://www.downsideabbey.co.uk/
The Vowles Organ
This instrument is unique, being the only organ built by Vowles of Bristol for a Suffolk church. It was first installed at St Edmund’s, Bungay in the late 19th century before being moved to Beccles when the church hall was opened as a temporary chapel in 1891.
The organ was moved into St. Benet’s when the nave was completed in 1901, and then in 1908 it was moved again to the transept gallery for the consecration of the church. It thus gave musical support to the choir located either side of the sanctuary as well as for congregational singing at Benediction.
The electronic organ in the nave was installed 15 years ago after the choir had moved into the ‘congregational’ area of the church, encouraging wider participation in the music at Sunday Mass.
The two instruments are now both used on occasional Sundays and on other important feasts of the Church year. Being an electronic instrument, the nave organ can be programmed to play at the same pitch as the Vowles pipe organ.
It has recently been cleaned and restored.
• Photos by Angela Marshall