The Roman Catholic Church of St Anne, Wappenbury was built in 1849, on a site given by Lord Clifford; it is in the Archdiocese of Birmingham. During the Second World War the priest was William Purcell Witcutt (1908–1972), who was a notable British religious minister, folklorist and author. He was born into the Anglican church, converted to Catholicism in the early 1930s, and returned to the Church of England in the mid-1950s. During the latter period, he served as the Rector of Foulness Island (or Foulness) a short while after it had been badly affected by the great North Sea Flood in 1953.