By Victoria Evans, Searchroom Archivist
On a recent walk down the Chichester Canal heading towards Hunston, I was told about the Carmelite Convent that housed a closed-order nun community between 1872 until 1994 which I had not heard of, even after living in Chichester for three years now! This sparked inspiration to see what we held in the archive and, of course, the result of that was this blog post. I’ll be delving into their history and how this community of nuns came to be in Chichester. Throughout this I will be referring to documents from the archive.
Dating all the way back to 1678, girls who wanted to follow a religious vocation had to leave England and go to mainland Europe. The Carmel of Hoogstraet was established in Holland and welcomed English-speaking girls for over 100 years. However, in the mid-1790s they were forced to flee to England as France invaded, which led to the collapse of the Dutch Republic. The nuns were lent a house in Dorset, but soon this was taken away from them, and they had to accept an offer of an old convent in Normandy. After years of struggle, in 1870 a bequest was left to them, and this allowed the purchase of land in Hunston where the Chichester Carmelite Convent was built. The architect was Charles Buckler, who is known for designing many Catholic churches and in the 1870s he was commissioned to re-build Arundel Castle. The builders were Cheesman & Co, and they had brickworks in Bosham. With all of this in place, construction of the convent began in August 1870.
During construction, Mother Mary Baptist, who was Mother Superior of the convent, had to make sure Buckler did not go overboard. Unfortunately, the church could not be added as the budget did not allow for it without going into debt. “The preparatory was arranged as a chapel and choir with the grate between. The preparatory is the ante choir, a room where the nuns kneel and pray before it is time for them to process into the choir to say the Divine Office” (source: History of the Chichester Carmelite Convent by Geoff Breeze). The convent was then completed in April 1872 and their first Mass was held on 4 May.
In 1930, a purpose-built chapel was finally added to the convent and was designed by Sebastian Pugin-Pewell. We, in fact, have the original building plan of the chapel that was submitted on 2 May 1930 (RD/CH/16/1/2223). Below you can see the building plans we hold.
For many decades after the chapel was constructed, the nuns practised their faith with little interruption. However, as this time passed, their numbers started to decline and by the 1990s their Chichester convent was much too big, and many repairs were needed. Therefore, when the opportunity arose to move near to Looe, Cornwall, with another Carmelite community at Sclerder Abbey, they took it. By 1994, it was time for them to make the move to Cornwall, and the nuns were granted consent to leave the convent to attend a mass of thanksgivings at St Richard’s Church that was attended by the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, priests from the area and many parishioners. This would have been the first time the nuns saw their parish church! But as explained by Mother Mary Augustine, ‘We are a closed order because we have chosen to place a little distance between ourselves and the world.’
The sale of the convent was also of concern and proved to be complicated. Eventually, at the end of 1994, the property was sold for an undisclosed amount (but on the market for £675,000) to a local Bosham building company, D G Phillips, and below you can see the sale particulars (SP 3673) we hold that detail the floor plan of the convent. And from the Chichester Observer they included photographs from within the convent (MP 8968).
It was initially intended for the convent to be converted into homes. However, this did not come to be, and the convent was left unoccupied for a number of years but still looked after. Unfortunately, in 2009, the convent chapel was subject to what is most likely thought to be an arson attack. But, it appears from searching news outlets this was never solved. The roof of the chapel suffered the most, and it was left looking like a ruin.
This was not the end though, as the Chichester Free School announced they would be developing and extending the convent with it being completed in 2018. Seeing the photographs of the new school site really shows a care for the old building that was once the convent and allows the building’s history to live on in a new fresh light.
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