ST CLEMENT’S, MARSTON ROAD

St Clement’s now stands in Marston Road, a turning on the north side of St Clement’s Street. The medieval church stood in the middle of the roundabout at the point where Iffley Road, the Cowley Road and St Clement’s Street unite for the crossing of Magdalen Bridge. It was pulled down and a new church was erected on the present site in 1828. The old church had Newman as its curate until two years before it was demolished. He took the services for an invalid rector, Dr Gutch.[1]
(From Goulder, Pilgrimage Pamphlets: Oxford & Cambridge, 1963)

It was in St Clement’s that the chapel of St Ignatius, with a presbytery, was built, in 1795, soon after the Catholic Relief Act of 1791 made it legally possible to do so. Mass had previously been said in hotels and public houses, notably The Mitre in the High Street, and in Catholic houses outside Oxford, such as Waterperry. Fr Charles Lesley SJ, who had been running the Oxford Mission from Waterperry, was the priest in charge of this project, which cost the considerable sum of £994 3s 4d. Newman walked to this church from Littlemore in order to hear Mass after his reception into the Church. It was the only Catholic church in Oxford until the building of St Aloysius in 1875 (for which see below). The last Mass was said in St Ignatius’ in 1911, although the site continued for some time as a Catholic School. Some of the buildings still survive, converted to other uses, behind railings on the east side of St Clement’s, next to the Port Mahon public house.

[1] Lived 1746-1831.