A sisterhood for a Victorian parish
In the 1840s the Oxford Movement encouraged some Anglicans to revive forms of religious life that had disappeared from England at the Reformation. William John Butler, who became vicar of Wantage in 1847, had been thinking about a community of women since about 1845. In 1848 a small sisterhood began in the town, one of the first Anglican religious communities to be founded since Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.
The early years were unsettled. Butler wanted a teaching community, but Archdeacon Henry Manning, who had spiritual oversight, and the first superior, Elizabeth Lockhart, turned it towards ‘penitentiary’ work with women who had been in prostitution or were otherwise destitute. St Mary’s Home for Penitents opened in Wantage in 1850. Soon afterwards both Lockhart and Manning joined the Roman Catholic Church; Manning later became a cardinal, and Lockhart founded a Franciscan community in London.
Butler then guided the sisterhood himself. Harriet Day, a farmer’s daughter who had come to help in 1849, was elected superior and in 1854 was installed by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce as the first Reverend Mother, a post she held for over thirty years. The sisters first lived in two cottages in Newbury Street. The foundation stone of a purpose-built home was laid on 25 July 1855, and they moved in the following year.
Growth
The community grew into one of the largest Anglican orders. The sisters ran schools in Wantage, including St Mary’s School, founded by Butler in 1873, St Michael’s and St Katharine’s, and they founded St Helen’s School in Abingdon in 1903. They opened houses across England and overseas, in India and South Africa, and later Botswana and Madagascar. From the late twentieth century the emphasis moved from large institutions to smaller houses, retreats, spiritual direction and hospitality. On 1 January 2013 eleven sisters left to join the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, part of the Roman Catholic Church. The convent at Wantage remains the community’s home.
The convent buildings
George Edmund Street designed the original convent (1855–56) and a chapel (1858–61). A larger chapel by J. L. Pearson was begun in 1887; Ninian Comper refitted its east end in 1923, and the artist-sister Maribel carved a statue of the Virgin for it in 1922 and, over decades, a set of Stations of the Cross. Several buildings are listed, the chapel at Grade II*.
Visiting
The convent is a working religious house on Denchworth Road. It has offered retreats and guest accommodation; contact the community before visiting.