THERE is a yellow skip piled high outside the convent of the Community of the Holy Name in Derby, and a hire van ready to depart. Last time I was here, it was for a Quiet Day among the snowdrops of the gardens and the studiousness of the library, but there is a remnant of just three nuns here today, and tomorrow the house will be empty.
They are on the move to a new home at Hessle, in Hull. Sister Edith Margaret, the Provincial Superior, will be the last to leave. As bursar, she masterminded the community’s first downsizing: a move here 31 years ago from Malvern, where the convent had 88 single bedrooms “and a chapel the size of Derby Cathedral”, she remembers.
“When we came here, we were 44 Sisters. Over the years, all but 19 of those have died. We have only had three people in that time who have joined us and stayed, and so we have been rattling round in this big building. Our accountant told us firmly: ‘You can’t afford to keep this going’; so that prompted us to really grasp the nettle.”
Grasping the nettle provoked an exhaustive search for a new home in the north, where they judged property to be cheaper. They trawled Liverpool, Bradford, the environs of Blackpool — but nothing chimed until Quarry Bank, a former care home in Hessle, appeared on the horizon. “We didn’t even know where Hessle was,” Sister Edith confesses. “But as soon as we got out of the car, we said, ‘This is it.’ We walked in and felt we could live here.”
It has taken a year to modernise and tailor the building for their use, including installing a new lift. A large room on the ground floor has proved ideal for a chapel, but there will be no library. Every sister has chosen 20 books, which, together with a few specialist tomes, will be “scattered around the shelves” at Hessle. “The library was used a lot when we first came here,” Sister Edith remembers. “Now, everyone works from laptops.”
Nuns, by their very calling, have few possessions; but, she says ruefully, “We have realised how much we have accumulated. Mostly papers, papers, papers . . . folders full of papers: every retreat I’ve taken, every course, every conference. It feels so good to shed things. I am ashamed of how much we have got.”
One Sister is in her late fifties, and another is in her early sixties, but the rest are over 70, and some are in their nineties. Sister Irene, who was 92, died during the removal process, and her funeral took place at Hessle on 22 June. Others have progressed to nursing care.
“We have been dealing with death as well, and were younger when we moved last time,” Sister Edith says with feeling, admitting that, while excitement and expectation is the prevailing mood, some of the Sisters were very anxious at the prospect of uprooting.
“It’s a new chapter,” she says. “It is good to have a completely new start, to think about who we are and what we want to be. We don’t have to change our constitution, but we do have to think about our Rule, and where that needs to be changed.”
Waiting on God, not knowing what new forms their ministry will take, is acknowledged to be the exciting thing. Sisters Monica and Julie, who have been first camping out and then living in the new house over the past year, have had a warm welcome in the neighbourhood.
They had no idea that their neighbour across the road was to be the Bishop of Hull, the Rt Revd Alison White, a long-time friend of the Community before she became bishop. “She had no hand in the move, but was thrilled to find we were coming,” Sister Edith says. “We’ll be keeping our boundaries, though, and wouldn’t dream of just popping in.”
THE Prioress of the Order of the Holy Paraclete at Whitby, Sister Jocelyn, has just come in from watering the garden on a hot day, and cheerfully confesses to being glad to sit down and talk. It is two years since the community moved “just up the garden” from the old St Hilda’s Priory, fulfilling Prioress Dorothy Stella’s vision in 2003 for a new priory.
The order had been in the building, adjacent to Sneaton Castle, since 1915, and is now a community of 24, eight of whom are in the care-home wing. The old priory buildings, with their myriad levels and stairs, had become entirely unsuitable for an ageing community: one of the two lifts was unable to accommodate wheelchairs, and there was nowhere, apart from the refectory, where the community could gather as one. Fire regulations had condemned the kitchens for their lack of automatic extraction.
The 15-year wait for the new priory “took longer than we thought, because it was dependent on selling some land”, Sister Jocelyn says. “But I can feel the hand of God in that, because plans from the original architect went with the lie of the land, and would have resulted in a building still on many different levels.”
The new St Hilda’s Priory in Whitby, home to the Order of the Holy Paraclete
A new architect, years later, used advanced design technology to explore how the land could be levelled. “It’s absolutely marvellous,” she says. “It means everyone can get everywhere.” The care home takes up half the ground floor, and able-bodied Sisters have rooms on the first floor. The community moved in just before Palm Sunday in 2019, and, for the first time, could all be together — an incredible and emotional moment, Sister Jocelyn remembers .
As well as its volunteering in Whitby — Sister Jocelyn helps at the foodbank — the convent has a strong guest ministry: there are 17 guest rooms in an adjacent building. The Sisters also have a loyal Sunday congregation, some of whom had worshipped in the old priory chapel most of their lives and had mixed feelings about moving.
But the new, smaller, octagonal chapel has, in itself, been a turning-point. “The idea was to have a space we could adapt for whatever we were doing, which didn’t need to be static. The only fixed points are the entrances and fire exits,” Sister Jocelyn explains. “We can hear each other across the space. It’s beautiful.”
With fewer Sisters, the convent has had to adapt liturgically. On major feasts in the old chapel, “we used to have a crucifer, two taperers, a book-bearer. . . You name it: we had it.
“Because of the size [of the new chapel], that’s not appropriate. And, if we use too much incense, it sets the fire alarm off. . . It all made us think about why we were doing things, and what did we need to do, not what we do because we’ve always done it.”
Twenty-four nuns is still quite a large number as communities go, she reflects. A novice had entered the previous day, and the arrival of another was imminent: both are women in their fifties, which, she observes, is now the trend.
She confesses that “just moving up the garden” has had some disadvantages: “We moved in bits and pieces, and there were things we were going to leave behind. . . But then we went and fetched them, whereas if we’d have been moving across the country, we’d have had to do without them.”
The new priory has been a godsend during lockdown and the winter, she says fervently. “It’s weatherproofed; it’s warm; we’ve got the space to move around. And we have just started having guests again, and the congregation back in the chapel. It adds dimension and purpose to the place.”
IT IS 12 years since the 24 remaining Benedictine nuns of Stanbrook Abbey upped sticks from Worcestershire and moved to a hilltop in the North Yorkshire National Park. Their former home, in the shadow of the Malvern Hills, was built for a community of 70 at the time of John Henry Newman’s “Second Spring”, when the vision of monastic life included a large, imposing building.
Four echoing floors were served by an erratic lift. Feasibility studies showed that it would be impossible to adapt. Like the nuns at Derby, they scoured the country for sites, returning each time with the conviction that none of them would be right — until they came to the 56 acres of greenfield land, where only “an exceptional building for an exceptional client” would pass muster, and only if it conserved the beauty and heritage of the natural landscape.
“We had found a site very rich in Benedictine monasticism. The land itself was probably farmed centuries ago by the monks of Byland Abbey and Rievaulx. We were renewing a footprint of faith that was already around us,” the Abbess, Dame Andrea Savage, said (Features, 27 October 2009).
Tim CrockerStanbrook Abbey, situated on a hilltop in the North Yorkshire National Park
The architects’ brief was for a building designed to last at least 250 years: a living contemplative tradition to pass on to the future. The Conventus of Our Lady of Consolation is an enclosed order, in which a great part of the day is spent in the nuns’ individual cells.
The new building had the cells nestling into the contours of the south-facing-slopes, with what one nun described as “the view, and nothing to interfere between you and God”.
An environmentalist’s delight, it was built of recycled sandstone, has solar panels and a woodchip boiler, and uses water from the rainwater harvester to flush the lavatories, wash the laundry, and serve outside taps. A reed-bed system is associated with the septic tank, and a mat of sedum on the cloister roof reduces noise and keeps in the warmth.
In Worcestershire, the 17 flat acres had meant that, as one nun put it, “You never thought twice about it. But when you went out for a walk, you literally went for the same walk every time. This is a community of faith, but we are very real people, and have the same problems as other people do in the world.
“In the world, if you’ve got problems, you can go down the road to the pub or the cinema, or go on holiday. Here, you can’t. That’s when you walk the 56 acres. That’s a very real way of learning to live in community.”
The community had to wait until 2015 for an abbey church, when funds permitted. Some of the Sisters still miss the magnificent church and monastery, the present Abbess, Dame Anna Brennan, acknowledges, but “the stunning beauty of where we now are, the expansive views, the simplicity of life, and the appropriate and necessary downsizing for a smaller community, all work for us in a most life-giving way.
“One of our older Sisters once said that a beautiful natural environment was important for contemplative monastic life, and we have that in abundance.”
There had been some fear about moving to “the north”, she said, with a mischievous emphasis on the word, “away from all that was familiar, to a place that was believed, by some, to be cut off, remote, and far from friends and longstanding associates and acquaintances, and from anyone who might be interested in coming.
“Instead, within a short time of arrival, new friends came — to participate in our worship and prayer, and to receive any other blessings we could share through monastic hospitality. People come for retreats, days of recollection, spiritual guidance, and conversation. And old friends who used to come to Worcester are now happy to come to us in far-away North Yorkshire.
“We have lost little and gained much. Thanks be to God.”