The Bridgettines of Syon Abbey

Upcoming talk 20 November 2pm

 CARMEN M. MANGION is a Senior Lecturer in the department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research examines the cultural and social history of gender and religion in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain focusing on the formation and rethinking of identities during times of social change. She is the author of Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age, Britain 1945-1990 (2020) and Contested Identities: Catholic Women Religious in nineteenth-century England and Wales (2008) and other publications. 

ABSTRACT 

The story of the Bridgettines of Syon Abbey has been remembered as one of triumph over adversity. They were one of two religious orders that were not dispersed after the Reformation, and the only one of the two to have survived thus retaining an unbroken line of succession from the original community founded in south-west London in 1415. After much ‘wanderings’ on the Continent and a short return to England in 1557 during the reign of Mary I, the community settled in Lisbon in 1599. Their permanent return to England in 1861 was celebrated in the Catholic press. This paper is about a lesser-known facet of their history, and examines Syon’s first return in 1809, when, threatened by the approach of Napoleon’s revolutionary forces, ten members of the Syon community in Lisbon returned to England. The paper begins by outlining the story of the 1809 departure from Lisbon. It then moves to what we know of the events that unfolded in England, identifying the individual Bridgettines, the places they resided, and their benefactors. It examines in depth the individual stories of two sisters who are dispersed, examining the fidelity to their identities as Bridgettines. Then, it considers the memory of the 1809 return interrogating how the history of the first return has been remembered and documented arguing the preoccupations of the twentieth century have shaped how the story of Syon’s first return has been told. 

If you would be interested in joining us online for this talk, then please contact us through cfhsrecords@gmail.com. You will in due course be sent a link for Zoom. If you do not have Zoom it is free and easy to download it to your device. Simply search for Zoom on your search engine and follow the instructions. We hope you will want to join us for what promises to be an enlightening talk. 

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Military Chaplaincy Registers

The eagerly awaited digitisation of the Military Chaplains registers is now complete, special thanks to the team for all their hard work.

These are available to search and view on the Members Area of the Catholic Family History Society website  https://catholicfhs.online/index.php

Margaret Higgins Database

The Catholic Family History Society is delighted to present to the world, now free of charge

THE MARGARET HIGGINS DATABASE

OF CATHOLICS IN ENGLAND AND THEIR FRIENDS

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See if your ancestors were recusant Catholics by following this Link

New Society Publications

The Catholic Family History Society’ are publishing collections of articles from past issues of Catholic Ancestor, collating important information about particular geographical areas.

Each booklet is around 22 pages A4, £3.00 each, plus £1.50 post & packing for up to two booklets:

Catholic Ancestors in Lancashire Volume 1

Catholic Ancestors in Lancashire Volume 2

Catholic Ancestors in the Midlands, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire Volume 1

Coming soon:

Catholic Ancestors in the North East of England

Catholic Ancestors in London

The above printed publications can only be ordered through cfhsrecords@gmail.com

Day Conference

A reminder that tomorrow (1 June) the North West branch of the Catholic Family History Society are holding their Day Conference in Preston at Fulwood Methodist Church, Watling Street Road, Fulwood, Preston PR2 8EA (Large Car Park at rear of Church).

Don’t worry if you haven’t booked, please feel free to drop in and join us.

Programme

1-00 pm Arrival and Welcome by Maureen Fitzgibbon
1-30 pm ON_LINE NEWSPAPERS: A VALUABLE SOURCE FOR FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH Lawrence Gregory M.A., Archivist, Newman Collection, Birmingham.
2-30 pm Afternoon Tea
3-00 pm SOURCES AND PROBLEM SOLVING Meet fellow family historians for discussion on established and new sources of information and advice on finding your ancestors. Bring your own research to show us! Discussion led by Brenda Hustler.
4-00 pm Meeting closes
Cost £8.oo per person (inclusive of all refreshments)

Enquiries – e-mail – jeansmith1934@talktalk.net

Discussions on Medical Mission Films

Spend a Saturday at Birkbeck Cinema discussing how can we begin to assessing the motivations, reach and impact of medical mission film productions on local and global audiences, for more information follow this link

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/films-with-a-mission-tickets-60371587042

All Hallows Archives Online

All Hallows College, Dublin was a Catholic Seminary which trained Priests for dioceses across the world.

The College was opened in 1842, and from 1892 was run by the Vincentians, like most seminaries, the decline in vocations in the second half of the 20th century led to its demise, from 2008 the College became part of Dublin University.

The College archives have now been digitised and are available online through their website, these include photographic records of former students, and copies of the College Magazine, these will be of tremendous help to genealogists tracing their ancestors who were educated here.

The archive can be viewed here

 

FINDING THE GRAVES OF YOUR CATHOLIC ANCESTORS

People researching their family trees often came into the Diocesan Archives expecting us to be able to identify the final resting places of their ancestors, and even maybe to find a surviving headstone full of useful information. Invariably these individuals went away sorely disappointed, and in this article, using the town of Manchester as an example, I shall explain why.

In 1854 when the government passed the Burial Act, and the Home Office ordered the closure of inner city burial grounds, the twin towns and Manchester and Salford had six Catholic graveyards, these being – Salford Cathedral, St Mary, Mulberry Street, St Chad, Cheetham Hill, St Augustine, Granby Row, St Patrick, Livesey Street, and St Wilfrid, Hulme, and Catholic inner-city dwellers up to this point would have been buried in one of these of these grounds.

Surviving Burial Records – There only exists surviving burial registers from Mulberry Street, Salford Cathedral, and Livesey Street, and none at all from Hulme, Cheetham Hill, or Granby Row. These records, although rare do provide an invaluable amount of information.

Surviving Grave Markers – Only St Chad’s, Cheetham Hill has any surviving grave stones.

Accessible Burial Grounds – All the burial grounds have been levelled and either tarmacked or built upon, with exception to St Chad’s, Cheetham Hill.

 

19^th Century Attitudes to Death and Burial

 Catholic burial and the keeping of records was not undertaken in any standardised way and it only through local newspaper reports about incidents in the burial grounds at Hulme, Salford and Granby Row we can actually start to understand what was taking place in this era.

St Wilfrid Hulme

In January 1856, the parish of St Wilfrid, Hulme found itself in the centre of a national media storm when the police began investigating into the death in August 1855 of Mr John Monaghan, of Hope Street, Chorlton on Medlock, under suspicions that he had been poisoned for a £300 life insurance policy. Monaghan had been buried in the graveyard of St Wilfrid’s and on the 24^th January 1856, the City Coroner ordered his exhumation, the Manchester Courier explains what happened next:

“Canon Toole, the resident clergyman, afforded every information and assistance in his power; but on going into the chapel-yard a difficulty presented itself as the Sexton could give no information as to where Monaghan was interred…Mrs Eliza King, the daughter of the deceased… was fetched and pointed out as nearly as she could the spot… and the process of exhumation at once commenced…the first grave that was opened contained a number of coffins; but, after they had all been taken out, it was found that Monaghan was not there. Five or six other graves were opened with a like result… the men continued working vigorously until one o’clock in the morning without success…” (Manchester Courier & Lancashire General Advertiser 26/1/1856)

“… On Monday morning… Mr Sturges, contractor, of City Road, was employed to take the coffins up from such a space of ground as should settle the fact beyond doubt, as to whether the body had been removed or not. At 11 O’Clock in the forenoon five men commenced taking up the coffins in the vicinity of the place pointed out… and about 20 minutes past three, they succeeded in finding his coffin”

St Augustine’s, Granby Row

In 1854, the Rector of St Augustine’s Church began construction of a new school on a portion of the burial ground, the Town Clerk visited the site and wrote:

“The foundations are being dug for an intended school… and in doing so many graves have been emptied of their coffins, which were so carelessly thrown on the adjoining surface; and a large number of coffins, of which many have only been recently interred, have been exposed to public view” (The Manchester Guardian, 5/7/1854)

The Manchester Courier went into more gruesome detail:

“There has been a considerable amount of excitement in the streets situated at the sides and back of the grave-yard belonging to St Augustine’s Roman Catholic Chapel, in Granby-Row…On Thursday, when our informant saw it, the sight was absolutely sickening… the surface was uneven, but where it was of the greatest depth showed that a thin covering of earth, not in any place thicker than a foot, had been the only covering over the bodies interned, and that they had been packed side by side, one upon another, with the upmost economy of space, until it was impossible to push a pointed instrument into the ground without meeting and adult or infant body. At one point where the workmen had sunk the deepest, thirteen tiers of these coffins had been exposed, and there seemed to be a ‘lower deep’ still, so that probably the original grave pits were sunk to a depth approaching to twenty feet… The trenches had been filled in with the foundation walls, and the space exterior to them packed in, with soil taken out, pieces of coffin, and the bones which they had contained… The term excavation cannot properly be applied to the holes we have named; there was literally no earth to cut into… it was all coffins, some in the last stage of decay, others fresher – one in the top row was not even discoloured…A most noisome smell proceeded from the pits… most of those that were quite uncovered were so tender that they that had been broken by the spades and feet of the workmen and a black unctuous matter oozed out in abundance… here and there one more rotten than the rest had given way…None at which the workmen had arrived remained intact; and wherever the eye rested, some sickening remains of mortality met it. A number of curious men and women were eagerly peering into these receptacles for the dead… a man tore up a portion of a fragile lid, and a bleached and grinning skull rolled to and fro set in motion by the force. In a corner of the yard near to the chapel… a troop of little girls, who scrutinised with keen and searching glance every hole that they could discover and seemed half inclined to venture into the pits for a rummage…” (Manchester Courier & Lancashire General Advertiser 24/6/1854)

Salford Cathedral

 “The closing of the ground by the side of St John’s Roman Catholic chapel must involve a serious reduction from the revenues of that place of worship, but the place appears to have been managed in a way which does not arouse any sympathy… they had resorted to the system of common graves in its most disgusting form, and interred bodies in a huge hole, yards wide, by yards deep, into which the sacristan might pack five hundred bodies if he were so minded, and which remained open for months”

 

These three incidents give us a snap shot of Catholic inner-city burials in the first half of the 19^th century, by 21^st century standards the lack of respect shown for the dead is shocking, but it demonstrates for us why tracing and identifying the resting places of your Catholic ancestors is very unlikely.

United Kingdom Census Records

For genealogists, the United Kingdom Census records are probably the most valuable records presently available. At the moment the census records from 1841 to 1911 are available searchable online at various commercial websites.

The next census, which was taken on Sunday 19 June 1921, is due to be released in 2022, this is despite efforts by various bodies to have it released earlier, as had happened with the 1911 census. However the official government position remained that “its intention to release the entirety of the 1921 Census returns in 2022, in accordance with the non-statutory ‘100 year rule’ which was adopted to reflect this undertaking of confidentiality”. The census when released will provide full details of the 42,767,530 individuals living in the United Kingdom at the time.

This however will sadly be the final census that genealogists will see for more than thirty years for a variety of reasons.

The 1931 census has been destroyed – it was being stored in an Ministry of Works warehouse that on the night of the 19^th December 1942 caught fire, not as is commonly believed as a result of the blitz, but simply due to an accident. An archivist from the General Register Office who surveyed the ruins after the fire reported:

You will regret to hear that in a fire last Saturday evening which gutted the Office of Works store containing our Census records at Hayes, the whole of the 1931 schedules, enumeration books, plans of division and miscellaneous material stored in cupboards etc were completely destroyed. Mr Farrow and I went down to inspect the remains yesterday and we are both satisfied that it would be useless to attempt any sort of salvage operation; we are leaving the Office of Works to clear and dispose of the debris in any way they think desirable.

The fire was not occasioned by enemy action and how it achieved such dimensions in a store in which special hydrants had been fitted and said to have been in charge of a fire guard of 6 paid watchers, is a mystery which will need investigation. It is hardly possible to imagine a more complete state of devastation than the scene presented to us in which it was impossible to see where some of the racks had stood and where the remains were nothing more than shapeless mounds of paper rubbish dragged outside the building by the firemen who tackled the fire and where even the least damaged sheets that were recognizable were charred to the depth of two or three inches on all edges.

The next census, due to have been taken in 1941, didn’t happen due to the War, although in 1939, the government department tasked with issuing National Identity Cards did construct a register of every person in the country at the time. Parts of the 1939 register is available online at Find My Past, but only the entries related to individuals born over 100 years ago, or who had died prior to 1991, however if you can prove the death of an individual since 1991, you can request their record to be opened.

Thus the next available census will be that taken in 1951, which not be available until 2052, another 34 years, leaving a massive gap for genealogists, that we will never be able to fill.

English Catholic Nuns in Exile 1600-1800 A Biographical Register

‘English Catholic history is, unavoidably, family history’ wrote Francis Young in his book of the Gages of Hengrave in 2015. Nowhere is this more obvious and centrally important than in the establishment and funding of the English convents in exile 1600-1800, and the associated colleges that continued to train priests. The final output of the long-running AHRC-funded Who Were the Nuns? project, led by Dr Caroline Bowden, was published on 30 October by Occasional Publications UPR, Oxford (Prosopographica et Genealogica vol. 15). English Catholic Nuns in Exile 1600-1800, A Biographical Register, edited by K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, was foreseen as the ‘book of the database’, when work started at QMUL in 2008. Once the project was finished and the results available as a live online database in 2012, Katharine Keats-Rohan started work on converting a print-out of the online prosopography into a printed biographical register. Much of the work of connecting the nuns and recreating their extensive family and spiritual networks was originally provided online by a series of pdf genealogical tables produced by Katharine, using a Family Historian database. The database was based on information taken from convent sources, but because of the vicissitudes of convent history, especially the fraught conditions of the re-migration to England c. 1790, data about family was sometimes missing. Such gaps were occasionally filled by recourse to notes in editions of the text by Gillow and others. The genealogies were built from skeletons usually derived from Visitation records such as are frequently printed in many books and articles on recusant families. As work progressed on the Biographical Register it became painfully clear that many of the (often very valuable) footnotes by Gillow and others produced more questions than answers, and that any charts based on Visitation material needed a root and branch re-examination. The result was a systematic exploitation of the evidence of Wills, initially as a means to provide accurate family reconstitution. Very soon it transpired that Wills provide key evidence about the way that the religious life of both nuns and their priest brothers was funded by families acting both as small nuclear groups and extended networks of cousinship. As a result, many of the gaps in the convent data, such as parentage, baptismal name, and sometimes even dates of death as well as birth, have been discovered and incorporated into the fully revised and extended text. In addition, all the original genealogical charts have been completely revised and many additional ones added, all provided in individual annotated charts in 303 separate tables united in a fully searchable Appendix, provided as a pdf on a CD insert.

The hardcover book, ISBN 978-1-900934-14-5, in A4 format, contains 708 pages as well as the 323-page Appendix on CD, and is available from the publisher for £75, plus carriage (by courier) at www.coelweb.co.uk. At a substantial weight of 2.1 kg, interested buyers outside Europe will need to negotiate the delivery cost before purchase.