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For many years the focus of Catholicism in this area was not at Petworth, but at Burton Park (the large house a few hundred metres East of the present church at Duncton). This house was, from some time in the seventeenth century until the end of the nineteenth century, in Catholic hands, and its owners had a chapel within the house. They also provided for a priest to say mass there.
In 1854 Burton Park was inherited by Anthony John Wright Biddulph. He decided to provide a Catholic burial ground, but then adapted his plans by building a church as well. The church, dedicated to St. Anthony and St. George, was designed by Gilbert Blount and built on land next to Duncton Cottage, which was used at the time as the priest's residence. The church was consecrated in August 1869, and due to the illness of the Bishop of Southwark this was carried out by Archbishop Manning, for whom this was familiar territory as in his Church of England days his parish had been almost within sight of this new church.
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At about the time that this new church was being built, Charles Willock Dawes moved into the area, taking up residence at Burton Hill, a house on the edge of the Burton Park estate. He had previously been an Anglican clergyman, but had recently converted to Catholicism. He was a man of considerable means, having inherited a large sum of money through his mother's family. At first he collaborated with Mr Wright Biddulph, and together they provided for a school to be built next to the church (at one time the Burton Park mission had, then, a presbytery, church and school all on the one site, although the presbytery and school have since been sold). Relations between the two men became very strained, however, and in the end Mr Dawes built his own church in Petworth, our present church of the Sacred Heart. This building, designed by Frederick Walters, was completed in 1896. Mr Wright Biddulph was angry that the bishop agreed to this new building, only some three miles from his church at Burton Park. He felt it undermined the independence of the church he had built, and in a sense he was right. The two existed side by side as separate parishes for thirty years or so, but were united in 1926, with the priest living at Petworth. At this time the Sunday mass attendance was a dozen or so at Duncton, and perhaps double that number at Petworth
Mr Wright Biddulph died in 1895; Mr Dawes died in 1899. Each was buried in the crypt of the church he had built. Mr Dawes left his house at Burton Hill to the Jesuits, who used it as a retirement house, as well as leaving a large sum of money to the Diocese of Southwark. For the Jesuits this was a return to Burton, because many of the chaplains who had lived and worked here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were members of the Society of Jesus.
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The first half of the Twentieth Century was a struggle for the little Catholic community in Petworth and Duncton. The numbers were never large; money was extremely difficult to come by; the buildings were falling into disrepair and indeed even by 1923 the Franciscans at Crawley, who had been asked to cover when the parish priest was unwell, pointed out that the condition of the house was so bad that it was effectively impossible for a priest to stay there.
During the war there was a Polish camp in Petworth Park, and there was a Polish priest to say mass there. Some of Poles who had lived in the camp, however, remained in Petworth after it was closed, and they were partly responsible for the considerable growth in mass attendance during the 1960s. After a long period as something of a backwater, Petworth began to take off as a vibrant and lively parish, which is what it remains to this day.
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