Cheam, St. Antony's Hospital Chapel

A mission was established here in the reign of Charles I, and served from the chapel of Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1755 the place was attended by the chaplains from the Portuguese Embassy. The register dates from about this time. During this period, Fr. Wm. Heatlcy, O.S.B., was instrumental in converting over fifty Protestants to the Faith, which led to a prosecution being instituted against him by the Rev. J. King, rector of the parish.

The chapel would appear to have been in the house of the Dowager Lady Petre, who long resided here. It was searched in 1745 — the year of the Jacobite rising — for a secret supply of arms which it was alleged existed there. In 1780, one Wm. Bryant, a Catholic, was "hounded to his grave in the parish churchyard by the hellish rabble" of Lower Cheam. The mission would appear to have been closed shortly after 1788.

In 1904 the Daughters of the Cross Nuns acquired North Cheam House from F. Burdett, Esq., and on June 21 of the same year opened a hospital for convalescents. The chapel serves the mission, which, exclusive of the hospital, has a Catholic population of about sixty, mostly resident at Worcester Park, q.v., some two miles distant.

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