The Final Blow

Vic Wood

"Well, that really is the end of Cannon Street.”. That was my mother's reaction in 2002 when the Roman Catholic Church of St Patrick was demolished. Our family is not Catholic but, nonetheless, we still felt somehow St Pat's was at the heart of the Cannon Street area. There was a sizeable Catholic population, many the descendants of the Irish who had settled there in Victorian times, so even those of us who were non-Catholics had a degree of familiarity with it having so many Catholic friends and neighbours who worshipped there. The thing I remember is the sheer colour of the place.( I suppose in contrast to our more austere Protestant tradition.) To me the interior seemed particularly beautiful.

St Pat's-at the heart of Cannon Street

Tony Caunce St Pat's was officially opened on Monday 17th Feb 1873 and the first mass was said in Lawson St School in 1873.The separate church building on the corner of Marsh St and Cannon St February was opened on Thursday 25th July 1901.Its position was central to the Cannon Street area and the new housing between Newport Rd and Union Street.

An Imposing Building

The Interior

St Patrick

The Clearance

The End of an Era

The Scooter Riding Nun

Although I was born in Valley Road I worked on Cannon Street for Ernest Hush the Pawnbroker. It was a very interesting time for me I met lots of good folk, I went on to marry Dicky Dolan from Over the Border.. We lived in Wentworth Street for the first 10 years of our married life and worshipped at St Patricks. Father Carhill was parish priest and later there was Father O'Neill and, of course, who could forget the scooter riding nun Sister Martha. It was certainly an end of an era when they demolished St Pats ---a wonderful building in a caring community. If only it were like that today.

Christine