It wasn’t until 1829, through the Catholic emancipation act, that Catholics were given the freedom of worship. At the time that the priests were hoping to establish a parish in north London, there were not many Catholics living in England. This would change, however, during the middle of the nineteenth century with the coming of the railways, which not only encouraged the growth and spread of new ideas, but also increased the arrival of railway ‘navvies’, or navigators, from Catholic Ireland. As late as the eighteenth century, anti-Catholic sentiment could still become violent. In 1780, in response to the passing of the Catholic Relief Act, Lord George Gordon led a mob in an armed attack on Parliament, which quickly degenerated into looting and drunken debauchery, and became known as the Gordon Riots. There was an anti-catholic riot in Highgate High Street in 1849, after a priest by the name of Father Ivers said Mass in a rented room and gave a series of lectures on Catholicism in the area. Although Father Ivers was compensated for the damages he suffered during the riot, the incident awakened already existing suspicion against Catholics in the area. Rather oddly, the owner of the Black Dog had refused an offer to sell the building and the site during the 1840s, after he dreamt that papists would buy it.
The ‘Old Black Dog’ served as a makeshift church until 1860, with the first Mass being said on an altar in its hallway. It wasn’t until Father Ignatius Spencer (an ancestor of the late Princess Diana) asked his uncle, the fifth Earl Spencer, for money with which to build a proper church. His uncle agreed and the construction of the new building began. The first stone was laid in 1860, but as London was rapidly expanding, a new, larger church was needed to better serve the parish. The church was demolished, being replaced by an ‘iron church’, which seated seven hundred people. The first stone of the present church was laid in May 1888; it was formally opened in November 1889, with no less than eight days of ceremony. The new building was indeed costly and the parishioners didn’t clear its debts until the 1930s, through extensive fund-raising efforts.
