The parish of St Anne, Chapel End, Nuneaton began its life just after the second world war. The western side of Nuneaton was – in common with the wider area – greatly shaped by quarrying and mining. At that time, all of Nuneaton was part of the parish of Our Lady of the Angels, in the town centre. In the mid-1930s Mass was being said by priests from that church in a house in Tunnel Road, Galley Common, a mining community at that time. Ten years later, they were saying Mass in the Green Lane Miners’ Hostel, Camp Hill, just off Camp Hill Road. In about 1946 the Hostel became unavailable, and the congregation was offered the use of an abandoned isolation hospital off Windmill Road. This was far from ideal, and so, after much planning and fundraising (bricks were sold at 1d each, for example) the foundation stone of the first St Anne's Church was laid on 19 February 1949 by Fr Cox, parish priest of Our Lady of the Angels. On 13 July of the same year Archbishop Masterson, the Archbishop of Birmingham, blessed and opened the building.
