This Page Sacred Heart under construction.
Sacred Heart is the Church on the New Road

The Sacred Heart Church in New Road, Boldon Colliery was completed in early 1938.   There had been a Roman Catholic Chapel in the Collier, which was built at the time the houses were built in Wells Row at about the same time as the sinking of the Pit.  (In the middle of the street, later made into a house, the front ediface can still be seen).   As the Pit progressed and the village grew larger the congregation outgrew the confines of the small chapel and the parishioners decided to try to raise money to build a new church, priests House, and it was planned, a new school. 

Land was acquired along New Road and the people of the parish began to fund raise.   No mean fete in the years between the General Strike of 1926 and the 2nd W.War.    Parishioners had coffee mornings, garden fetes and money was raised in every kind of activity including selling bricks at 6d. a time.

The church and house were built at a cost of £3,500 and it was hoped to build the school once they were completed but the outbreak of war in 1939 put paid to their plans and the parish has been lamenting the lack of a Catholic School ever since.   After the war several Parish Priests looked at the possibility of building a school but by the time the parish could think about fund raising for a school,  the numbers of children who could attend had fallen,  and the cost could not be justified.   A Parish Hall was built on the site in the 1960's by the men of the parish,  which allowed many social activities to take place and was well used for the benefit of all the community.

In 2003 Priest and Parish, realising their dream of a school would never now be realised, decided to sell off the land and Hall ( The Meadows Residential  Home now stands on the land the hall once stood on and the adjoining 'school'  field ) and the proceeds would enable them to create a Parish Room for social activities and a Priest's flat,  in the Priest's house building, and a new entrance to the church and a badly needed safe car park.   It was a great wrench for the older parishioners to agree to the sale, remembering as they did,  the great effort, the sheer hard work, the fundraising and now the abandonment of their  hopes and dreams for a Catholic School in Boldon.
Kindly provided by Margaret Davison

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