Sacred Mysteries: Life story of the woman who built 40 churches

In the first decade of the 20th-century, a middle-aged single woman arranged and paid for the building of 40 churches mostly in south London. The churches, generally rectangular structures of London stock brick with a round window in the west end facing the road, are sometimes referred to as “Ellis boxes”, but they are by no means despicable in design and among their number are some distinguished buildings. In letters unearthed by Patrick Heren, for many years an energy journalist, Miss Ellis comes over as quiet but practical, with the determination to overcome difficulties with her health. In one letter she cheerfully offers to fetch the nuns’ fish from Penzance: “I cannot get warm without going out, being obliged to be nearly always by an open window to be able to breathe, and I am always very cold until I have been out.” Miss Ellis’s Cornish tranquillity did not shelter her from the annoyances of the world. Miss Ellis’s achievement emerges in the gazetteer that the author provides of the churches for which she was responsible, transforming Catholic life a century ago for thousands of Londoners.