The history of Roman Catholic worship in Burpham is neither long nor illustrious. From 1953, Masses were held in a house belonging to two sisters and soon after in the disused Kingpost Cafe on London Road. Fr. Gordon Albion, parish priest for Sutton under whose remit Burpham then fell soon sought to buy this property but could not negotiate a reasonable price, so the search for a place to worship continued.
In 1958 a detached house called Orchard Cottage and adjacent large garden came on the market and were acquired by the parish. A modern church was erected and the first Mass was celebrated in June 1960. The house was retained meanwhile and became the Presbytery in order to house the newly appointed priest.
The church was never particularly well attended and was to some extent superseded in 1972 by the newly opened St. Pius X in Merrow, with which it joined to form the Roman Catholic Parish of Merrow with Burpham the following year.
The congregation dwindled thereafter until the end of the 1990s when it had become unsustainable to run.
Closing Mass was held on Sunday, 7th September 2003 and the site was subsequently sold. Multiple planning applications have been submitted since, but to date all have been rejected.
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Despite vandalism and the uninspiring architecture I found much to see - large amounts of paperwork, books and other odds and ends had been left behind and the hall was littered with toys and furniture. This is a busy residential area; my visit was hampered by curtain twitching neighbours, major roadworks going on outside and two men in a hatchback who drove up and idled in the lane for what seemed an age while I waited for them to leave. The church is a mess and, being of no great architectural merit seems unlikely to last much longer.
