ALB-Historic England-Taking Stock: East Anglia (360G-cabinetoffice-GA-125276)

This exercise is designed to assess the number of Listed Churches in the Diocese of East Anglia including those buildings which may warrant listing either now or in the future. The history of Catholicism in East Anglia is relevantly recent with most churches having been constructed in the period following the Catholic Emancipation in the early 19th Century. Any religious building prior to that is most commonly the private property of the older Catholic families. In some cases the earlier public Catholic places of worship were constructed to a very modest exterior design which did not readily identify their purpose, whilst the interiors reflected the Catholic tradition of rich embellishment and ornamentation. In several cases, a church has been built to accommodate a very small congregation which reflects the relatively small concentrations of the Catholic population in rural areas. These are not now financially viable as separate parishes and have been absorbed into the adjacent larger parish. It is vitally important that these examples do not become victims of the rationalisation of available priests, buildings and congregations where their use and continued maintenance becomes questionable in the face of economic and demographic considerations.