When the Old Mass came to Balham

St Bede’s has become one of London’s great liturgical churches. The departing parish priest explains how it all began

St Bede’s Church, Clapham Park, is by no means an imposing building. It is set back from the road and you can quite easily walk past it without spotting it. If you were to see it, you might think that it was a Methodist chapel; perhaps High Methodist, since there is a cross outside the vestibule with SAVE YOUR SOUL painted on it.

Yet you’d be so wrong. Over the past quarter of a century St Bede’s has become one of the great Catholic parishes of London, to be ranked, so far as traditional liturgy is concerned, with Spanish Place, Maiden Lane and even the Brompton Oratory.