Assembly Rooms behind the Belle Vue Hotel on the present site of the Pavilion Theatre were used at different times for Catholic and Congregationalist services and as a synagogue. The first recorded Mass was in 1861–62 when Mrs Washington Hibbert of Dover Street, London, spent the winter and established a private chapel at the hotel. The Mass was said by Fr Thomas Mochler SJ, who came from Lymington, the nearest church in the Diocese of Southwark. From 1863 to 1865 Lady Catherine Petre undertook the upkeep of the chapel. During the winter 1865–1866 Thomas Weld Blundell kept a private chapel at Walton House, Richmond Hill. From 1866 until 1867 Lord Edward Fitzalan Howard kept a private chapel at Brunstath on the East Cliff. Throughout this period Masses were attended dominantly by affluent visitors coming for the winter. There was first only one permanent Catholic resident, Sergeant Maurice O’Connell, drill sergeant of the 4th Hants Volunteers, but Catholics from a wide area attended. O’Connell was succeeded by Thomas Long as the one permanent Catholic resident. When the gentry were away Catholics travelled in a horse bus to St Mary's Church, then in the Old Town of Poole.
