Consecration of St Mary's Church

Without the benefit of modern construction techniques and project management expertise, the church was built in less than eighteen months. The Derbyshire Chronicle and Midland County Advertiser, dated 16 October 1839, reports:

"On Wednesday 9th October 1839 the newly erected church in the Bridge-gate Derby, which has been dedicated to St Mary, was consecrated by the Right Rev. Dr. Walsh, Catholic Bishop of the Midland District, assisted by the Right Rev. Dr. Briggs, Catholic Bishop of the Northern District, and Rev. George Spencer and the clergy of Oscott College, and sixty or seventy clergymen."

The report goes on to list the names of many of the great and good who were in attendance, and states that "the aisles and every part of the interior were crowded with an elegantly dressed congregation; and when the clergy, clad in their rich vestments, surrounded the altar, the whole presented a scene of magnificence rarely witnessed in this country."

During the Pontifical High Mass Doctor (later Cardinal) Wiseman preached, from the gospel of St Mark, chapter 4, verses 31 & 32, beginning his sermon with the words: "St Mary's, without exception the most magnificent thing that Catholics have yet done in modern times in this country."

What is not recorded in the Advertiser is the row that occurred between the architect and the parish priest immediately before the service started. This is graphically set out in Rosemary Hill’s biography of Pugin, ‘God’s Architect’. Rev Sing, the parish priest, thought it would be a suitable tribute to the occasion to bring in a member of the London Philharmonic Society to conduct a Beethoven Mass with full choir and orchestra.

But for Pugin “the form of the Mass was of the essence. It had to be medieval plainchant. To revive the architecture, furniture, vestments and other attributes of medieval Catholic worship was to create the true, authentic setting. If the Mass itself was modern, it made a nonsense of the whole thing. Pugin and (the Earl of) Shrewsbury demanded the music be changed. Bishop Walsh ... pointed out the musicians were already in their places. In that case, Shrewsbury said, they could not use the gold cope he had donated. Walsh, who was wearing it, took it off and the Earl, the architect and the rest of their party loaded up their vestments and left.” As Ms Hill laconically remarks: “It was not a dignified scene”.