Education

The history of our schools

The Ursulines of Upton, or Forest Gate as it is now generally called, were the first to come to England. Their arrival in London in 1851 coincided with a very important moment in national history. Victorian England was by then established as the leading industrial nation of the world. But alongside its growing wealth and influence, there existed “a multitude of miserable, sunken and ignorant human beings”, whom the Ursulines were soon to find among the children of the East End of London.

Two events shaped Catholic life in England in the middle of the 19th century. The first one was the birth of the Oxford Movement, the aim of which was to bring the Church of England back to its roots. The most famous member of the movement was one John Henry Newman*, whose studies in history eventually persuaded him to become a Catholic. The impact of Newman, and indeed other converts to Catholicism, on the Catholic Church in England was very considerable and brought a culture and education the older Catholics of the day had been denied.

The other event was the arrival of an ever-increasing number of Irish immigrants from the famine, settling in rapidly growing towns like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. It was not easy for the Catholic Church to merge these two disparate elements – the intellectual, theological philosophers such as Newman and the general, ever growing numbers of ordinary, uneducated Catholics.

The answer of course was education, and more especially therefore, schools. Fr John Kyne, a priest in Clerkenwell, one of the very poorest parishes in the East End, had heard of the educational work of the Ursulines of Tildonk, in Belgium and he made the official request that they would come to teach in his schools.

Thus, the story of the Ursulines in England began in 1851, when three Dutch and one English Ursuline Sisters arrived in London on May 19th 1851.

Knowing only a few words of English, they lodged in one of the worst slums in the city in a back alley called Wood Street in Eastcheap. Neighbours were intrigued by “the Pope’s daughters” as they were called, who came out to stare and insult them whenever they left the house. Walls were daubed with graffiti; “No Popery” and “Down with the Papists”. There was no way they could have either Mass or the Blessed Sacrament in the house, so the Sisters, accompanied by a bodyguard of young Catholic men, had to walk to Mass, “being too afraid to look up and knowing the way by counting the paving stones as they went along”, so greatly were they maligned and mocked.

Cardinal Wiseman was appalled when he came to visit, not only by their living conditions but also by the impact such surroundings were having on their health. In the short term, he encouraged them to come to his country house at Leyton for some fresh fruit and vegetables, and he also suggested that they should modify their religious costumes and wear bonnets.  But they did not comply with the latter suggestion, and they bravely continued to wear their habits, the first women religious in England to do so since the reformation.

Cardinal Wiseman had also promised he would find them different accommodation and with his help, they moved to Northampton Square in EC1. There, the neighbours were no less hostile, but the accommodation was more spacious and, much more importantly, there was a little chapel.

In 1854, they met a Fr Mc Quoin, who was to play a very important part in the life of the Ursulines in England, and he found them accommodation in Broad Street Buildings, where Liverpool Street Station now stands.

*Blessed John Henry Newman was canonised in Rome by Pope Francis on Sunday, 13th October,2019 – the first English Saint to be canonised since the 17th century.

Further Details

The story of the Ursuline Houses (see table) which once existed in England, is told in the hugely informative “The Ursulines in England 1851-1981”, by Sr Mary Winefride Sturman OSU and the summary above is from her chapter “The Foundation of Upton”, (pages 17-27).

Further details of the history of the Order and the individual Ursuline schools can be found at:

www.ursulines.co.uk/history

www.ursulines.co.uk/ursuline-schools

We are indeed standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

Ursuline Education Community, October 2019