Before the Protestant Reformation in 1559, Catholics worshipped in the medieval parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul – now Sheffield’s Anglican Cathedral.
After the Reformation, Catholic worship was outlawed and it became law to attend the new weekly Protestant services.
Only rich families, people working on their estates or people living quietly in the countryside could continue in the Catholic faith. Priests were hunted down, imprisoned and martyred.
Until the 18th century, Catholics faced fines, loss of property and social exclusion.
In Sheffield, Mass was celebrated in a few houses of gentry, including in a house in Fargate which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk and had a hidden chapel in its roof.
Anti-Catholic laws were relaxed early in the 19th century and Catholics were allowed to build modest churches.
Sheffield Catholics bought the ageing house, which stood where the Next shop is today. They built a small chapel in its back garden on a site which is now between the Mortuary and the Blessed Sacrament Chapels.
The names of the priests who served Sheffield before the Cathedral was built and the dates of their deaths are on the wall of the Mortuary Chapel.
The rest of the land where the Cathedral now stands became a cemetery.
By 1846 the chapel was too small and the young priest, Fr. Pratt, was keen to build a church for the expanding town.
A leading local architect called M.E. Hadfield designed St Marie’s, based on a 14th century church at Heckington in Lincolnshire.
The church was expensively decorated with the aid of generous donations from the Duke of Norfolk, his mother and parishioners.
Bodies from the cemetery were moved to the new Catholic cemetery at St. Bede’s in Rotherham and work on St Marie’s began.
Fr. Pratt died while the church was being built and was buried at St. Bede’s. However, a stonemason, who had often heard him say he wanted to be buried in St Marie’s, dug up the coffin and re‑buried Fr. Pratt in a tomb he had prepared near the altar. Fr Pratt’s body still lies there and a plaque marks the spot, but his effigy has been moved to beneath the altar in the Mortuary chapel.
St Marie’s was completed in 1850 and opened on September 11th. Building the church cost more than £10,500 – a huge sum in those days – and it was not until 1889 that the church was free from debt.
The Parish of St Marie’s, which covered the whole of Sheffield, became part of the Diocese of Beverley when Catholic diocese were re-established for the first time since the Reformation in 1850.
In 1902 a new presbytery, now known as Cathedral House, was opened. During the Second World War a bomb blew out stained glass windows in the Blessed Sacrament chapel. The remaining windows were removed and stored in a shaft at Nunnery Colliery.
The mine flooded during the war, the glass sunk in mud and drawings for re‑creating the windows were destroyed, but it was still possible to re-install the windows in 1947.
When St Marie’s was re-ordered in 1970, following Vatican II, dark woodwork was removed and new lighting and benches were installed. In 1972, a new altar, facing the people, was consecrated by Bishop Gerald Moverley, auxiliary Bishop of Leeds.
On the May 30 1980, the new diocese of Hallam was created and St. Marie’s became a Cathedral. Bishop Moverley was installed as its first bishop and served until his death in 1996, after which Bishop John Rawsthorne became the second Bishop of Hallam.