ROMAN CATHOLICISM
Despite hints of religious conservatism in the mid 16th
century, there is no evidence of a strong recusant tradition in the town either then or later. (fn. 1) In 1549
Oxfordshire gentry met at Witney to coordinate
suppression of the Prayer Book rebellion, which had
spread to Oxfordshire from the West Country, but no
Witney townsmen seem to have been implicated, and in
1577 only five recusants were reported there. (fn. 2) Among
them was Thomas Wenman of Witney Park, related to
the prominent recusant family of Fermor. (fn. 3) Two or three
members of the recusant Tempest family lived at Witney
in the early 17th century, and in 1641 Francis Rathbone,
one of a recusant gentry family from Brize Norton,
refused to sign the Protestation oath. (fn. 4)
Later recusants, never from more than three or four
families at a time, seem mostly to have been tradespeople
of lower status, associated probably with a group centred
on the Greenwood family's manor house at Brize
Norton: a priest from there tried to proselytize in Witney
in the 1750s, but was stopped by the rector. (fn. 5) In 1767 ten
out of twelve recusants recorded in Witney were women,
including a shopkeeper, mantua-maker, publican, and
tailor's wife. (fn. 6) Two or three Catholic families remained in
1802, when the Brize Norton group was in decline, but by
1808 there were none. (fn. 7) Despite Witney's generally
tolerant and ecumenical tone, (fn. 8) strong Protestant
Dissent may have prolonged anti-Catholic feeling among
some inhabitants. In 1837 the Roman Catholic Thomas
Stonor, encouraged to stand for parliament by several
leading townsmen, was nevertheless warned to expect
'bigoted cries of No Popery', (fn. 9) while in 1850 a public
meeting in Witney to petition against establishment of
Roman Catholic dioceses was attended by Anglican,
Wesleyan and Congregationalist clergy. (fn. 10)
In the late 19th century an apparently short-lived
mission in Witney was established with a bequest from
Daniel Hanley, Oxford's first Roman Catholic mayor: a
room supplied by the station master was furnished with
fittings from a defunct oratory at Ham Court in
Bampton, with mass celebrated on a monthly basis by
visiting priests from Oxford and, later, from Buckland
(then Berks.). (fn. 11) An oratory served by a visiting priest
from Summertown or Begbroke was established before
1915 at No. 1 Church Green, and during the First World
War masses were celebrated in the former workhouse
chapel for Portuguese prisoners of war helping to
construct Witney aerodrome. (fn. 12) A Roman Catholic
church, dedicated to St Hugh of Lincoln, was established
about 1930 in the former Anglican schoolroom at West
End, a small, plain, stone building erected in 1881; at first
it was served from Eynsham but from 1948 it had its own
priest, living at No. 1 Church Green. By the 1970s it was
too small, and in 1975, after many years' fundraising, it
was replaced by a new church at the foot of Tower Hill,
with sittings for over 300 and an attached presbytery. The
dedication was to Our Lady and St Hugh. (fn. 13)
The Convent of the Sisters of Charity opened in
Curbridge Road in 1959, those resident undertaking
pastoral work, or teaching in the nearby Catholic
primary school. (fn. 14)