Mgr Ray Charlton writes,

I was interested in the article published in the April edition of the Catholic Voice regarding the Old Tabernacle discovered by Fr Dominique Minskip in St Bede’s Church Choir, Hull. I think I may be able to help. In the 1930s, Mgr Bickerstaffe and I were Altar Servers in the Sacred Heart Church, Hull. My recollection is that the tabernacle appeared to be a wooden structure, the doors veiled with the appropriate liturgical colours of the day. The original church had been built in 1926/27 and was paid for by Councillor Frank Finn in memory of his brother Fr William Finn who was killed as a chaplain in Gallipoli in 1915. It is possible that many Catholics who would remember Fr William felt that they would like to associate themselves with the new church and, in his memory and in memory of those who had died in the Great War, collected money to purchase the tabernacle and donate it to the Sacred Heart Church. It graced the Altar there until the 1950s when Fr Tom Breen was Parish Priest and he reorganized and extended the church, installing a new altar and tabernacle. The old tabernacle was transferred to the newly built Church of St Bede’s in East Hull in 1952. Subsequently, during a refurbishment of St Bede’s, the tabernacle was set aside until Fr Minskip’s recent discovery.