Front view
Wikimedia Commons
St Thomas of Canterbury is a Catholic church in Newport, Isle of Wight, in the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth. Erected by the benefactress Elizabeth Heneage, and completed in 1792, it was the first purpose-built Catholic church constructed on the island after the Protestant Reformation, and is believed to be the oldest such Catholic church in the country.[1][2]
The church was built immediately following the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1791 (31 Geo. 3. c. 32), which allowed Catholics to practice their religion, but with restrictions. Anything that made a building look too much like a church, such as steeples and bells, were forbidden, and as a result St Thomas’s has a very plain exterior more reminiscent of a Quaker Meeting House than a Catholic church.[1]