Landmark · St Helier
St Thomas' Church
A Roman Catholic church in Val Plaisant, its foundation stone laid on 6 September 1883, built for a French-speaking Catholic community on the island that by then numbered some four thousand.
The story
A Roman Catholic church in Val Plaisant, its foundation stone laid on 6 September 1883, built for a French-speaking Catholic community on the island that by then numbered some four thousand. The church it replaced, in New Street, held no more than four hundred. The architect was Alfred Frangeul of St Malo, and the tower and spire together stand 196 feet high, making the church the dominant feature of the St Helier skyline. It was built by and for a congregation of incomers, in the French Gothic manner, on an island that had spent eight centuries fortifying itself against France.
