Remembering Bishop Robert Willson

Today, Monday 16th December, marks the 200th Anniversary of the Priestly Ordination of Father Robert Willson: ‘Nottingham’s Parish Priest’. Father Willson was the protagonist behind the building of Nottingham Cathedral, then built as a parish church prior to the restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850 and its elevation to the status of Cathedral. Bishop Patrick will celebrate a Mass at the Cathedral today at 1pm in thanksgiving for the remarkable life and ministry of this priest, who went on to become the first Bishop of the Diocese of Hobart, Tasmania in 1842. All are welcome to join in person or virtually.

To mark the occasion, the Friends of the Cathedral have been looking back through the diocesan archives to learn more about this remarkable priest and the legacy he left in both the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham and the City of Nottingham.

In a book to commemorate the Cathedral’s centenary, we read this apt description of Bishop Willson ‘…that much loved pastor of the Nottingham Catholics, who later became Bishop of Hobart in Tasmania’. In the same publication, Bishop Edward Ellis (7th Bishop of Nottingham), reflects on the immediate post-Emancipation context in which Fr Willson set out to build such a magnificent Church in what was known as England’s ‘protestant belt’ on account of the very small percentage of Catholics in the region at the time.

‘To have built such a cathedral between the years 1841 and 1844, was a marvellous venture of faith, for it was only a few years after the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and nine years before the restoration of the Hierarchy in September 1850 that the Rev.W.Willson, then the resident priest in Nottingham and afterwards Bishop of Hobart Town embarked on his immense task of building a Catholic Church of a size unheard of since pre-Reformation days.’

It is no surprise that Bishop Ellis said this of the bishop and his collaborators: ‘Bishop Willson, Pugin, the Earl of Shrewsbury- what giants in Faith and Confidence they were to erect this great building for a small body of Catholics in days of intense opposition.’

In another souvenir publication for the Cathedral’s Centenary in 1944, the following portrait of Bishop Willson, including his impact at the Cathedral, in the City of Nottingham and later Tasmania, Australia, can be found:

‘Augustus Welby Pugin enjoys, quite rightfully, the professional renown for the building, but the real presiding spirit at its inception was Father Robert Willson”. So wrote Mr. Wm. C. Boswell in a series of articles entitled ‘Remembering Famous Men’.

Let us then outline the life story of this truly outstanding priest. Robert Wm. Willson was born at Lincoln in 1794. His father, a builder, placed him as a pupil on a farm in Nottinghamshire, but when about twenty years of age he became a convert to the Catholic faith, studied for the priesthood at Oscott College and was ordained in 1824.

Two months later he was sent to Nottingham. Here he found himself in charge of less than 150 people; within a year he had doubled the number of practising Catholics in the town and decided to build a church, St John’s George Street…being opened in 1828. Father Willson visited the Workhouse, the General Hospital, the Asylum, two prisons and the House of Correction. He particularly distinguished himself in the Nottingham cholera epidemic of 1832, saving many lives by his treatment, for he went from house to house. With Samuel Fox, a Quaker, the Rev. Benjamin Carpenter, minister of High Pavement Chapel, and Mr. Wm. Enfield as his usual companions, he even helped to carry the coffins of cholera victims to their graves because the undertakers’ men were frightened to touch them.

For his work during the cholera epidemic, he was given the freedom of Nottingham.

In collaboration with Samuel Fox, he obtained an Act of Parliament for a General Cemetery for the burial of citizens, who did not belong to the Church of England. Fox, the Quaker, had given a field for use as a cholera burial ground but when this was consecrated by the Archbishop of York, the Church of England claimed it as their property!

It was Father Willson who, with the approval of Dr. Walsh, Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District, bought 6,000 yards of land on what was then known as Toll House Hill, for 12s. a yard as a site for St. Barnabas Cathedral and Presbytery, and 4,000 yards as a site for the Convent of Mercy. The total cost was £20,000. The Earl of Shrewsbury gave £7,000 and the Rev. R. Waldo Sibthorpe, who later became a member of the cathedral staff, £2,000.

When Pugin’s plans arrived and building commenced, Father Willson himself acted as Clerk of the Works. When in 1842, before the Cathedral was built, the Vatican named him as the Bishop-Elect of Hobart Town, Tasmania, the Mayor, Town Clerk and Magistrates of Nottingham signed a petition which was forwarded to the Vatican asking that he should be permitted to stay in Nottingham.

The reasons they gave throw even more light on Father Willson’s remarkable personality, it being stated: ‘He has supported municipal authorities in the maintenance of peace and in several instances, he has succeeded by his personal influence in pacifying rioters and excited assemblies which, to have suppressed, would otherwise have required a considerable exertion of physical force on the part of police’.

Father Willson was consecrated Bishop in 1842 and sailed for Tasmania two years later. His last act in Nottingham was to ascend the spire of the cathedral and bless the Cross at its summit.

Archbishop Ullathorne wrote a memoir of him. He found terrible conditions prevailing among the 30,000 convicts who had been transported to Tasmania, and voyaged 1,400 miles to the convict settlement on Norfolk Island, where 1,900 convicts were working in chains, some weighing 36 lbs. In 1847, Bishop Willson came to England to lay the state of affairs before a committee of the House of Lords. Later, he laboured for a reform of the conditions in the lunatic asylums in New South Wales, Australia. On his way home in 1865, he was struck with paralysis. He died in Nottingham in 1866, aged 72, and is buried in the Cathedral Crypt.

Post Script:
Transfer of Remains from Nottingham Cathedral to St Mary’s Cathedral, Tasmania, Australia.

In 2005, the Archbishop of Hobart wrote to the Bishop of Nottingham to begin the process of having Bishop Willson’s remains repatriated to Tasmania. After consulting the Cathedral Chapter, Bishop Malcolm McMahon op approved the transfer in principle. The repatriation process stalled at this point and it was not until 2016, following the 150th anniversary of Bishop Wilson’s death, that the current Archbishop of Hobart wrote to Bishop Patrick McKinney and asked would he give his permission for the exhumation and transfer of the mortal remains of Bishop Willson back to the Archdiocese of Hobart, Tasmania.  Following permission from the bishop and approval from the Ministry of Justice, Bishop Willson’s remains were exhumed in 2017 and he now rests in the Crypt of St Mary’s Cathedral, Tasmania.

At the time of the exhumation, Bishop Patrick said: ‘While, as a diocese we will miss having his remains in the crypt of our Cathedral, it was Bishop Willson’s documented intention to return to Australia. This was frustrated by his suffering a severe stroke during his last trip back to England in 1865 and his death a year later in Nottingham.’ The present Archbishop of Hobart said that , on receiving Bishop Willson’s remains back into the island state in 2017,  ‘it was quite an emotional moment I think, to receive the body of the first bishop of Tasmania...it was his request and his expectation that he would be coming back to Tasmania. People say that he was ahead of his time in many of the social reforms that he sought to implement, his interventions led to changes in government policy in Tasmania, and generally in the way that convicts were being treated’. Archbishop Porteus commented on the reaction of the people of Nottingham when their parish priest was appointed as the first Bishop of Hobart in 1842 ‘the local [Nottingham] people were very upset, and actually petitioned the Pope, to say ‘please do not send him away.’