St Dominic's Priory

General information

In 1861 Cardinal Wiseman invited the Dominican Friars to serve the influx of Catholic immigrants to the Kentish Town area of London. Within a year or so they had purchased three acres along Southampton Road in a district known as Haverstock Hill, and they had the Cardinal’s permission to build a Priory and a Church there. It was to become the 'headquarters' of the Order in the United Kingdom.

The current church, designed by Charles Alban Buckler, wasn’t completed until 1883. Inspired by the apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes and her call to pray the Rosary, the Friars agreed that the title of the Church would be “Our Lady of the Rosary” and the building would have fourteen side-chapels each dedicated to a mystery of the Rosary with the final fifteenth mystery, the crowning of Our Lady as Queen of Heaven, commemorated in the stained glass window above the High Altar. The church is one of the largest in London, and its soaring and beautifully decorated interior is hidden behind a relatively plain facade. To enter it is to discover a treasury of riches, much like the Rosary itself which is simple to pray but contains many abundant graces.

For a while the Church did become a place of pilgrimage. For example, in 1895 a pilgrimage was organised for Rosary Sunday with people coming to our Church, dubbed “Our Lady’s Shrine in London”, from all over the city and beyond.

In March 2016, during the Jubilee Year celebrating 800 years of the Dominican Order, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, announced that he would confer on the church the status of Archdiocesan Shrine, with a mission to promote the Holy Rosary. The Dominican fathers hope that this status will attract pilgrims from far and wide to pray within this beautiful and prayerful church.