The Catholic chapel of St. John Fisher, Merton situated in a pleasant suburban of south-west London, Cannon Hill Lane, SW20. The chapel and its own parish tend to be contemporary, but the title Cannon Hill takes us right back four and a half hundreds of years. It had been the canons of great Augustinian Priory of your woman at Merton which possessed this 'Canondownhyll'. Whether John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester who was simply one of the first Reformation martyrs, previously checked out Merton we have no idea. Truly he would have known much about its priory where St. Thomas a Becket had been informed and Henry V1 crowned. The London residence of the Bishops of Rochester, across the street compared to that of this Archbishops of Canterbury, is at Lambeth, just some eight miles away.
The present day parish of St. John Fisher runs over part of that which was the canons' manor of Merton, and part of the old manor of Morden, which was additionally had by the Church in this case, because of the Benedictines of West minster Abbey. The priory additionally the abbey had been both mixed in 1539, four years after Fisher ended up being executed. With these great religious homes gone, plus the shadow associated with money therefore the legal ever-present, the folks of Merton and Morden appear to have rapidly conformed in the Reformation. Couple of if any Catholics lived in either spot) both had been small villages surrounded by available country) from after that until really present times.A farm occupied today's website of St. John Fisher's church, the parish hall while the presbytery. It had most likely existed considering that the seventeenth century at the least, and certainly will be seen from the chart of 1865. Behind it had been the expanse of Merton Common.within the 1830's the railway stumbled on Wimbledon and Raynes Park, but the calm country round Cannon Hill had been left undisturbed for nearly a hundred years much more. Following the very first World War, London's development stretched further and additional into south-west. Fundamentally in 1926 the pipe railroad went to Morden, as well as in 1930 the Southern line found South Merton. Builders covered nearly the whole of what exactly is now St. John Fisher parish with homes and flats to generally meet the need from commuters. New residents, most of them young families, stumbled on Merton and Morden and formed a new community. Included in this had been a sprinkling of Catholics.
The Jesuits had arrive at Wimbledon when you look at the 1870's and the district of Cannon Hill had been element of their particular parish of Sacred Heart, Edge Hill, Wimbledon. Catholics schools, Wimbledon university, the Ursuline convent at Wimbeldon, the Sacred Heart main college, in Burlington path and St. Mary's, Russel path, was in fact founded. These facilities encouraged Catholic households to live in the area, like the new housing estates in Merton and Morden. Father M.T. Ingram, SJ built the hall that will be today St. John Fisher Parish Hall. This was a Sunday Mass Centre and in addition focus for personal activities. Father Derbyshire SJ had been appointed priest- in-charge in addition to hallway was blessed on 29th October 1938. Father Derbyshire continued to call home inside Jesuit home in Wimbledon and stumbled on say Mass each Sunday and holy-day. Father Arnold Jordan SJ took over from Father Derbyshire in 1940, he lived-in both areas within the hall. Sunday Mass attendance had been about 230. A flying bomb exploded instantly behind the hallway on 18th Summer 1944 and almost destroyed the hall, if the war finished a temporary corrugated-iron asbestos roofed church ended up being built and opened in 1948 in identical 12 months a tiny household when it comes to priest ended up being integrated the website today occupied because of the church car park. The Jesuits handed over the region of St. John Fisher into diocese of Southwark.
St. John Fisher was made a parish in July 1949, Mass attendance was 382. Father James O'Donnell ended up being appointed the first parish priest. He'd been a professor during the Diocesan Seminary in Wonersh and ended up being ordained priest in 1933. During their time he built the present chapel, new presbytery, and two Catholic schools, in 1965 Canon O'Donnell was appointed a Canon, he remained in parish as parish priest for 32years until their demise in 1981.