St Chad Haggerston

St Chad’s Haggerston, is a parish under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Fulham. We are in the Stepney Area of the Diocese of London. It reflects in the congregation the fullness of the local community. Encompassing traditional and modern liturgy. Hackney is present in the Mass here too.

You can look up it’s history as a building. Please see some links below. Just to say this much: Designed in 1868 by James Brooks, an architect from nearby Stoke Newington, St Chad’s was described by Sir John Betjeman as “one of the best examples of an East-End Anglo-Catholic church”. Nowadays it is a Grade 1 listed building. A parish church has the privilege of being able to serve the whole community. It is rooted in the present and past experience of the community. Our mission statement includes the experience of our parish church being there for all people in the community. ‘Membership’ of such is not required to somewhere rooted in the locality. ‘Rooted not planted‘ as someone recently remarked… It is the Holy Spirit that gives us life and health and makes us part of the Body of Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. Every person counts as a unique gift of grace in our worship.

At its foundation the parish of St Chad was combined with St Mary’s Haggerston. Known as the ‘mother church’ at one time. (The area around which is now called St Mary’s Estate) St Mary’s was a fine eighteenth century church, destroyed by a direct hit in the Blitz of World War II. More recently St Chad’s Parish encompasses St Augustine’s Haggerston, the birthplace of Father Wilson’s A Haggerston Catechism.

St Chad’s church stands within the Fellows Court Estate on the corner of Dunloe Street and Appleby Street.

Church buildings are special places constructed in a community by people for people. If they are prayed in, they feel ‘hallowed’. People come in and pray before the Blessed Sacrament throughout the day. Please read the ‘ministries‘ link to see more.

This year of 2023 our gospel mission recalls a centennial: the resounding words of Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar. He preached at the Anglo- Catholic Congress in the Albert Hall, 1923. He was speaking to what would have been called in those days a ‘spiky’ audience – most of whom longed to have tabernacles on their altars before which they could honour the Real Presence — appealing passionately, the Bishop cried,

‘Come out from before your tabernacles and walk with Christ, mystically present in you, through the streets of your cities and villages…You have your Mass and your altars, you have begun to get your tabernacles.. Now look for Jesus in the ragged and naked, in the oppressed in the sweated, in those who have lost hope and in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus in them, and when you have found him, wash his feet in the person of his brethren’.