A brief history of St Richard's Church

1829	Catholic Emancipation – Masses are said in the Bedford Hotel in Southgate.
1855	Chichester's first post-Reformation Catholic church is built, thanks to a remarkable donation from two domestic servants, Mary and Anne Henshaw, who saved from their meagre wages and provided funds to build a small Victorian Gothic church seating 160 worshippers. The site, on Southgate, between Theatre Lane and Old Market Avenue, is donated by Anne, Countess of Newburgh. The church is dedicated to St Richard, a 13th century Bishop of Chichester. The church is designed by noted Victorian civil engineer and architect William Wardell.
​1872	​4 May: the first Mass is celebrated at the Carmelite Convent in Huston. The Carmel of Chichester was founded in 1678 in Hoogstraet on the Dutch-Flemish border.

The first St Richard's Church, on Southgate.

The Carmelite Convent at Hunston.

Carmelite chapel, built 60 years after the Convent.

​1957	28th August: Parish Priest Fr Peter Tak launches a plan to build a new, larger church seating 350 people and a new presbytery. He announces he can raise £22,000 of the £52,000 cost estimate (it actually cost c.£75,000) in sales and loans so he creates a Football Pool to fund the shortfall.
1958	19 March: the first Mass is celebrated in the new St Richard’s Church, which was designed by the architects Tomei and Maxwell.

Fr Fox with the Football Pool's treasurer, Dirk Kirkham.

The architect's model for St Richard's.

Building is shown underway in the photo from the West Sussex Record Office Chichester Photographic collection.

The sanctuary in 1958: before it was adorned.

​​1960	​March: the Football Pool has so far raised more than £30,000. By 1963 it will have more than 190 collectors, Catholic and non-Catholic, and 14,000 players.
1963-5 ​	The marble cladding of the altar and sanctuary and the stained glass panels from Chartres and paintings by David O’Connell are added to the plain shell of the church.
​1981	The Football Pool ceases operating, having raised more than £750,000 for St Richard’s Church and Presbytery as well as contributing to the churches in Bosham, Nutbourne, Selsey, Midhurst, Petworth and Slindon, St Philip Howard School and St Richard’s School. And the city’s old swimming pool!
1986	The parish rooms are built.
​1994	May: having lived in the Convent at Hunston since 1872, the community of Carmelite nuns visit St Richard’s for the first time, for a Farewell Mass celebrated by Bishop Cormac Murphy O’Connor. Due to diminishing numbers, the Convent is sold and the nuns leave the parish and move to Sclerder Abbey in Cornwall. Read more on the Convent here.
​1997	​January: Parish Priest Monsignor Michael Jackson launches an appeal to build a nursery unit. Within weeks, £50,000 is given and the nursery opens on 14 April.
​1998	21 March: St Richard’s is consecrated by the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Cormac Murphy O’Connor. ​Relics of St Richard and St Philip Howard are placed into the altar stone with due ceremony.
​1999	8 December: Fr Jonathan Martin, having cleaned out the bell tower himself, blesses the bell, Gabriel, before it is rehung in the tower. The bell had been out of use for many years. This was the 41st anniversary of the day the bell was first raised and hung, having been donated by parishioner Joe Tomlinson in memory of his parents. The bell was cast in Durham.
2007 ​	13 November: St Richard's is listed as a Grade II building by English Heritage. The principal reason is the church's possession of one of the largest collections of Loire glass panels in Britain.
2008 ​	​Parish Priest Fr Kieron O’Brien organises a project to reorder the church, most notably moving the font from a baptistery in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel to a more prominent place in front of the sanctuary, installing a stone ambo and building the Reconciliation Room. ​
2016	A large kitchen is built in a redecorated Upper Parish Room, creating a more welcoming space for groups to meet in. ​
2021	On 1 November 2021, St Richard's again became the administrative centre of an enlarged parish when the parishes of Selsey, the Witterings and Chichester were all suppressed by Bishop Richard Moth, and a new parish created covering the territory of all three. After a consultation of parishioners at all the churches, who suggested many names and patrons, most notably Our Lady under many titles, St Richard and other local saints, Bishop Richard gave the new parish the name 'Parish of Our Lady and the Saints of Sussex.'

1994: Nuns of the Carmelite Convent visit St Richard's for their Farewell Mass.

1998: Bishop Cormac places relics of St Richard and St Philip Howard into the altar during the church's Consecration.

1999: Fr Jonathan blesses the bell, Gabriel.

2010: Installation of a new stone ambo completes the reordering project begun in 2008.