Windleshaw Chantry

Windleshaw Chantry stands on the old part of St Helens Borough Cemetery in Merseyside. Built in 1415 by Sir Thomas Gerard, it was meant as a private chapel for his family and named after St Thomas of Canterbury. The small sandstone building measures fifty by forty feet, with walls three and a half feet thick and a tower rising thirty-six feet. The chapel survived Henry VIII’s Chantries Act because a royal inspector ruled it too small to suppress. Yet after the local priest Richard Frodsham died, Protestant authorities left it empty during Elizabeth I’s reign. For centuries it served as a secret burial ground for Catholic priests, over sixty of whom lie here—more than anywhere else in England of similar size. Among them are Bishop Thomas Penswick and his brother, the last survivor of the Douai Jesuit school. Today the chapel is a quiet stone witness to those turbulent years. A family vault of the Gerards stands nearby, and fragments of the old market cross lie to the south. In 2008 the first mass in nearly six hundred years was held inside, followed by further services at Easter. Plans for repairs may yet restore this ancient place to something of its former role.