The Italian Job

St Peters, Trollington, could not lay claim to an illustrious architect or wealthy patron, as could other churches in the Diocese. The Irish millworkers who came to the valley just in time for the Catholic Emancipation Act were grateful for the opportunity of hearing Mass( somewhere other than in a field, with lookouts posted to spot approaching redcoats), and so just about scraped together enough to buy an old Unitarian chapel, (whose worship leader had got lost on the moor repeatedly, and decided to return to Crandleford in a huff)  and to furnish it respectably. By the 1940s the original chapel was bursting at the seams, and a rather enterprising young priest decided to build a new church on a rocky outcrop of land he begged from one of the local mills.

Original plans for Trollbridge Cathedral

Now, the War put the kibosh on many a building project - what with the shortage of workmen, and rather rampant inflation. That could be why the people of Trollbridge, having put their hard-earned pennies towards a fabulous Byzantine Cathedral designed by Lutyens with a Dome bigger than St Peters Basilica, and having seen the magnificent foundations and crypt completed only for the entire workforce to down tools and go off to war -  woke one morning in the 1960s to find that there had been a slight change of plan - and that they were expected to worship in a concrete wigwam instead.

In Trollington, meanwhile, young Fr Lonergan solved the labour problem by corralling a large group of Italian POWs, who lived on the moors above Trollington, and were hanging about after VE Day, waiting to go home, warm their bones, and get some decent grub. Owing to bureaucracy (and possibly some rather sneaky novenas by Fr Lonergan)  they were not shipped out straight away, and to occupy their time, and give thanks to God, they gladly volunteered their labour and built an exquisite church using local stone, but with the elegance,beauty and warming love of the South. Fr Lonergan searched far and wide for items and materials which he liberated from bomb sites, and the Italians took time out from flirting with the local girls to construct a marble Altar, and a magnificent Mosaic of the Crucifixion behind it.  I would like to be able to say that people came from far and wide to admire the church, and many did indeed heave out the Morris Oxford, or Vauxhall Cavalier over the years,but they generally got lost on the moors, and ended up at a Methodist tea rooms instead. Many of the Italians stayed, and married local girls, which did wonders for the gene pool and the church population. Fr Lonergan stayed too - and while he was too conscientious not to follow direct orders from Rome in the matter of the Novus Ordo, he read them very strictly, and ignored the blandishments of the modernisers.