Three people are considered to have been responsible for the church as we know it today.

Baroness Pauline von Hugel who vigorously urged the need to whoever would listen and helped provide the finances.

Father Charles de Lapasture, who initially worked in the Sacred Heart church in Richmond Hill - at a time when that church included in its boundaries Boscombe and neighbouring areas.

The third person came much later and is considered as the second founder of the church - Father Ralph Baines regarded as "a big man in every way", (pictured here).


With much encouragement from Baroness Pauline and based on St Edmund's Church in The Avenue, Southampton, which she particularly liked, work initially began on Corpus Christi Church on the 22nd August 1895 to a design by W. Lunn of Malvern.

Click here - laying of the foundation stone, on the 22nd August.

The work proceeded smoothly and the church, able to seat 400, was soon completed and ready for the official opening which took place on the 8th September 1896, the feast of the Birthday of Our Lady.

The entrance was by two separate doors at the west end, each leading into an individual porch, the area between these porches being occupied by the baptistry which was rather cramped.

Above these porches and the baptistry was an oaken choir loft, projecting forward into the nave, with access from a stairway in the south-west corner of the church. The beams supporting the loft can be seen in old photographs of that part of the church.

The lofty nave was built fifty feet high and consisted of five bays, with two relatively low and quite narrow side aisles. Lancet type windows allowed light into the clerestory of the nave and similar windows were built into the outside walls of the aisles. A large apsidal sanctuary of two bays were also furnished with lancet windows, three on each side and six in the apse.

The high altar was in oak and was a copy of that made for the Queen of Saxony's Royal Chapel. On the south side of the sanctuary, in the first bay from the east was a handsome brickwork seilia. Beyond this, was the small Lady Chapel, with the entrance to the Sacristy on its south side. On the north side was the Nuns Choir, connected by a covered way with the Convent of the Holy Cross. Through this, generations of children have made their way into the church.


In 1907 an attractive wrought iron screen was erected between the arches separating the Nuns Chapel from the Sanctuary.

The organ was rebuilt in 1908 and a large pulpit in mereil and black marble was erected on the epistle side of the sanctuary arch in 1925 by the congregation as a memorial to Father de Lapasture, who had died two years previously.

As the area served by the parish developed, it became clear that the church was no longer large enough to accommodate the congregation, particularly during the holiday season.