St Ethelbert’s was built with the financial patronage of Frances Elizabeth Ellis (1846-1930), whose inheritance from her father enabled her to devote her life to founding churches, hospitals, hospices, orphanages and nursing homes.

[1] On the afternoon of Friday, 23 May 1980, 88-year-old parish priest Edward Hull, OSB, and Ethel Maude Lelean (his housekeeper for 27 years) were killed in the presbytery.

Hull, a Royal Air Force chaplain during World War II, was the former headmaster of the Abbey School then at Westgate.

Henry John Gallagher,[2] aged 29, was convicted of the double manslaughter (not murder, owing to diminished responsibility) and sent to Broadmoor Hospital.

A stone statue weighing about six hundredweight represents St. Gertrude in an attitude of prayer, holding in one hand the Sacred Heart.

On the north side at the eastern end is a sacristy, while the south, or Hereson road frontage, is the porch and the Lady Chapel.