It was in that founding year that five members of the group travelled from the town of Namur, Belgium and settled here among the Liverpool people. Their purpose was to educate the girls of England on the teachings of the Bible and to nurture the religious upbringing of the poor and needy. This building set up for the task became known as the "Training School of Notre Dame" or simply, "Mount Pleasant", due to its location.
The structure itself was constructed the previous year to the designs of architect Charles Hansom, with a small chapel being added the following decade by ME Hadfield. Its current name stems from a connection to the city surveyor, John Foster Junior (c1786- 1846). He had lived at an adjoining property at No 82, which can still be seen today.
As late as the 1960s, part of the college gardens had been used as vegetable plots to supply healthy and immediate food to the nuns in residence. The majority of the foodstuffs to be brought in from outside was meat, otherwise the convent was something of a self- contained community.
Today, the gardens have been largely landscaped, with meandering paths and seating areas helping to create a calming location for students.
Today, the gardens have been largely landscaped, with meandering paths and seating areas helping to create a calming location for students.
A friend of my, Elena is the personality with both - joys and sufferings in her life.
This unbelievable story happened to her in 2006.
According to Elena, in the first time she saw ghost - the Blessed Virgin on the January 21, 2006, as she was sitting on the bench in the garden after her college life drawing class. A woman in white stood in the garden and called to her: “I am the Virgin of the Poor” and “I come to relieve suffering.”
“As I saw this, I couldn't say a word. I was flabbergasted!” – said Elena. “I didn't realize what I was seeing and so I stared at this lady with a long gown on and I started looking down and all I could see was that she seemed to be floating above the ground, a lady, seemingly made of light”
Elena noticed the light that surrounded her body and she was wearing a long white gown with a sash, as well as a transparent white veil on her head. Elena could see a rosary with a golden chain on her arm.
“At that point I got really scared, but still couldn't yell or do anything. After a couple of minutes, she appeared to be gone, but at that time it seemed ages!”
“After this encounter, I didn't want to tell anything to my husband since I thought he wouldn’t believe me and also because I wasn't sure if this really happened to me. But this woman stayed in my head, so after a couple of days I decided to talk about it to my husband since I didn't feel at ease and because it wouldn't go away out of my head”
Elena told her husband about what had happened, but he laughing on her: “You are crazy!”
So she decided to keep it in secret from anyone.
This unbelievable story happened to her in 2006.
According to Elena, in the first time she saw ghost - the Blessed Virgin on the January 21, 2006, as she was sitting on the bench in the garden after her college life drawing class. A woman in white stood in the garden and called to her: “I am the Virgin of the Poor” and “I come to relieve suffering.”
“As I saw this, I couldn't say a word. I was flabbergasted!” – said Elena. “I didn't realize what I was seeing and so I stared at this lady with a long gown on and I started looking down and all I could see was that she seemed to be floating above the ground, a lady, seemingly made of light”
Elena noticed the light that surrounded her body and she was wearing a long white gown with a sash, as well as a transparent white veil on her head. Elena could see a rosary with a golden chain on her arm.
“At that point I got really scared, but still couldn't yell or do anything. After a couple of minutes, she appeared to be gone, but at that time it seemed ages!”
“After this encounter, I didn't want to tell anything to my husband since I thought he wouldn’t believe me and also because I wasn't sure if this really happened to me. But this woman stayed in my head, so after a couple of days I decided to talk about it to my husband since I didn't feel at ease and because it wouldn't go away out of my head”
Elena told her husband about what had happened, but he laughing on her: “You are crazy!”
So she decided to keep it in secret from anyone.
I took this pictures of Mount Pleasant garden today:
The woman in white reappeared and told Elena she was "Our Lady of the Poor". In one of these visions, Elena said the Lady asked her to write down your prayer on piece of paper because Elena cannot even whisper one words, and placed it on an old shrine or some sort of small shelter, empty now but probably there was inside a holy sculpture before or crucifix.…I don’t know how called this place…
The story behind this building says that students were exploring the attic, (so and I did today with my husband) , in an unused room, they saw a woman who looked like a schoolteacher, dressed in 1930s fashions.
After they tried to talk to her they noticed that she was transparent and floating above the ground. They ran away.
After that, more strange things happened: lights flipped on and off, toilets flushed by themselves.
A common disturbance here is the "strange sound," which often occurs even on the top floor of the building: the sound of someone dropping hundreds of marbles onto the floor above you.
After they tried to talk to her they noticed that she was transparent and floating above the ground. They ran away.
After that, more strange things happened: lights flipped on and off, toilets flushed by themselves.
A common disturbance here is the "strange sound," which often occurs even on the top floor of the building: the sound of someone dropping hundreds of marbles onto the floor above you.
I found more information about this building:
http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1...ry-calling
An elementary calling
The rich legacy of the Catholics who supported education for the poor and the training of female teachers in the mid nineteenth century can be seen in Liverpool today
CATHERINE HUGHES IN 1855, a magazine called The Catholic School appealed for “some Catholic lady of means” to give £5,000 towards the foundation of a training college for Catholic schoolmistresses. Within a year the donor had been found, a location agreed and the first principal appointed. Thus it was that the Notre Dame College of Education opened its doors in Liverpool exactly 150 years ago and offered Catholic girls – many from poor Irish immigrant families – the opportunity to become teachers. Its establishment was to have a lasting effect on the extent and quality of teaching in Catholic schools throughout England.
The idea for the college originated among wealthy Catholic converts in London: Scott Nasmyth Stokes, the editor of The Catholic School, and a former Anglican vicar, Thomas William Allies. Both were members of the Catholic Poor School Committee and before the advertisement appeared Mr Allies had visited the mother house of the Sisters of Notre Dame to propose the idea of a women’s training college to the Mother General. They had also identified the woman who was to become the first principal: a young Notre Dame sister, Sr Mary of St Philip, formerly Frances Lescher, who had been part of their upper-class Catholic set in London. The family, originally from Alsace, had thrived in business in England. They were extremely devout, with two other daughters joining the Benedictines and a son joining the priesthood.
The “Catholic lady of means” who emerged was another English Sister of Notre Dame. She had formerly been Laura Petre, a daughter of the Catholic peer, Lord Stafford, and widow of the Hon. Edward Petre. By 1850, at the age of 39, she entered the Notre Dame Convent in Namur in Belgium and became Sr Mary of St Francis. The order decided that her money should be spent on the provision of education for the poor in England and later Scotland. Sr Mary regularly visited England to see how her money was being spent and in one letter of 1851 gave a vivid account of a visit to one poor school: “There were hundreds of little boys in a semi-circle, rather like an amphitheatre, and they were all so dirty and black that I could not make out their faces in the half-light of the room. All I could see were rows of shining eyes.” England had seen a huge influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s. In 1850, when the English hierarchy was restored, the bishops decided the Irish poor must be helped to join English society and rejuvenate Catholicism in England. Education would be the key and so Catholic training colleges had to be provided.
The Mount Pleasant College was based at the recently founded Notre Dame Convent in Liverpool. Like a number of other religious orders, the sisters took advantage of the pupil-teacher system, to found “poor schools” funded by government grants. Promising pupils were apprenticed at the age of 13 for five years and required to teach for five and a half hours a day, with lessons from the school head in the evening. Thus, in St Anthony’s School, Liverpool, in 1870, the sister who was headmistress had six teachers, one aged 14 and five who were 13. At 18, these young women went on to a two-year course in a training college such as Notre Dame in Liverpool.
Many Catholics deplored any connection with the state in education, but Sr Mary of St Philip consistently argued against this and became a respected and often consulted expert in the education of future teachers. Just before she became principal at Mount Pleasant at the age of 31, she and three companions sat the Teacher’s Certificate examination, so establishing the precedent of religious sisters taking public examinations. They gained first-class passes with ease, and in 1858 their first students at Mount Pleasant passed so well that the Chief Secretary for Education wrote a personal letter of congratulation to “Miss Lescher”.
The funds provided by the aristocratic Sr Mary of St Francis became crucial after 1863 when a system of “payments by results” was introduced. A number of training colleges were forced to close because they could receive no grant for their schoolmistresses until they had qualified and received successful reports from their first two years of teaching. Mount Pleasant struggled on until the system was abolished 25 years later.
Sr Mary of St Philip was principal until 1886 and then became superior of the Mount Pleasant complex, which by then included a middle school, a high school and a house of residence for 70 pupil teachers. The community numbered 60 sisters, most of them head teachers in the poor elementary schools. The “Elements”, as the sisters were known, would on occasion accompany their pupils’ mothers down to the docks on pay days to pick up the “housekeeping” money to ensure that all the wages did not end in the ale house.
The traditions created by Sr Mary of St Philip continued long after her death in 1904. Her legacy was one of loving concern for the poor but also a heavy routine lightened by celebrations, centred around the great feast days.
There were also botanical excursions beginning at 6 a.m. with parties travelling across the Mersey to the Wirral. Sr Mary’s emphasis on the after-care of students also survived, with later principals continuing her custom of regular correspondence and an annual retreat that included workshops on educational developments – and ideas and themes for religious teaching.
In 1961, under Sr St John, new halls of residence were opened in St Michael’s Hamlet, an inner suburb of Liverpool. This, and the advent of secular members of staff, to supplement and eventually outnumber the sisters on the staff, changed the atmosphere but not the ethos of the college. In the early 1970s men appeared among the students.
It was around this time that student numbers began to fall and the three voluntary teacher-training colleges in Liverpool came together. Collaboration in academic subjects came first; then in 1980 the two Catholic colleges amalgamated as Christ’sNotre Dame College. When the Mount Pleasant site was sold it seemed a disaster to all who loved the college. But eventually out of this change and the speedy amalgamation with the Anglican college, St Katharine’s, came the Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, to be transformed itself into Liverpool Hope University College. Last year this became Liverpool Hope University, the only European university founded on ecumenical Christian principles.
Sr Mary of St Philip’s dedication, in faith, hope and love, with all the sisters who followed her, has found what can now be seen as its great reward in an institution of higher education which has those three words as its motto.
*** Sr Catherine Hughes joined the staff of Mount Pleasant College in 1953. She was General Moderator of the Sisters of Notre Dame from 1984 to 1990.
source: http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1...ry-calling
http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1...ry-calling
An elementary calling
The rich legacy of the Catholics who supported education for the poor and the training of female teachers in the mid nineteenth century can be seen in Liverpool today
CATHERINE HUGHES IN 1855, a magazine called The Catholic School appealed for “some Catholic lady of means” to give £5,000 towards the foundation of a training college for Catholic schoolmistresses. Within a year the donor had been found, a location agreed and the first principal appointed. Thus it was that the Notre Dame College of Education opened its doors in Liverpool exactly 150 years ago and offered Catholic girls – many from poor Irish immigrant families – the opportunity to become teachers. Its establishment was to have a lasting effect on the extent and quality of teaching in Catholic schools throughout England.
The idea for the college originated among wealthy Catholic converts in London: Scott Nasmyth Stokes, the editor of The Catholic School, and a former Anglican vicar, Thomas William Allies. Both were members of the Catholic Poor School Committee and before the advertisement appeared Mr Allies had visited the mother house of the Sisters of Notre Dame to propose the idea of a women’s training college to the Mother General. They had also identified the woman who was to become the first principal: a young Notre Dame sister, Sr Mary of St Philip, formerly Frances Lescher, who had been part of their upper-class Catholic set in London. The family, originally from Alsace, had thrived in business in England. They were extremely devout, with two other daughters joining the Benedictines and a son joining the priesthood.
The “Catholic lady of means” who emerged was another English Sister of Notre Dame. She had formerly been Laura Petre, a daughter of the Catholic peer, Lord Stafford, and widow of the Hon. Edward Petre. By 1850, at the age of 39, she entered the Notre Dame Convent in Namur in Belgium and became Sr Mary of St Francis. The order decided that her money should be spent on the provision of education for the poor in England and later Scotland. Sr Mary regularly visited England to see how her money was being spent and in one letter of 1851 gave a vivid account of a visit to one poor school: “There were hundreds of little boys in a semi-circle, rather like an amphitheatre, and they were all so dirty and black that I could not make out their faces in the half-light of the room. All I could see were rows of shining eyes.” England had seen a huge influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s. In 1850, when the English hierarchy was restored, the bishops decided the Irish poor must be helped to join English society and rejuvenate Catholicism in England. Education would be the key and so Catholic training colleges had to be provided.
The Mount Pleasant College was based at the recently founded Notre Dame Convent in Liverpool. Like a number of other religious orders, the sisters took advantage of the pupil-teacher system, to found “poor schools” funded by government grants. Promising pupils were apprenticed at the age of 13 for five years and required to teach for five and a half hours a day, with lessons from the school head in the evening. Thus, in St Anthony’s School, Liverpool, in 1870, the sister who was headmistress had six teachers, one aged 14 and five who were 13. At 18, these young women went on to a two-year course in a training college such as Notre Dame in Liverpool.
Many Catholics deplored any connection with the state in education, but Sr Mary of St Philip consistently argued against this and became a respected and often consulted expert in the education of future teachers. Just before she became principal at Mount Pleasant at the age of 31, she and three companions sat the Teacher’s Certificate examination, so establishing the precedent of religious sisters taking public examinations. They gained first-class passes with ease, and in 1858 their first students at Mount Pleasant passed so well that the Chief Secretary for Education wrote a personal letter of congratulation to “Miss Lescher”.
The funds provided by the aristocratic Sr Mary of St Francis became crucial after 1863 when a system of “payments by results” was introduced. A number of training colleges were forced to close because they could receive no grant for their schoolmistresses until they had qualified and received successful reports from their first two years of teaching. Mount Pleasant struggled on until the system was abolished 25 years later.
Sr Mary of St Philip was principal until 1886 and then became superior of the Mount Pleasant complex, which by then included a middle school, a high school and a house of residence for 70 pupil teachers. The community numbered 60 sisters, most of them head teachers in the poor elementary schools. The “Elements”, as the sisters were known, would on occasion accompany their pupils’ mothers down to the docks on pay days to pick up the “housekeeping” money to ensure that all the wages did not end in the ale house.
The traditions created by Sr Mary of St Philip continued long after her death in 1904. Her legacy was one of loving concern for the poor but also a heavy routine lightened by celebrations, centred around the great feast days.
There were also botanical excursions beginning at 6 a.m. with parties travelling across the Mersey to the Wirral. Sr Mary’s emphasis on the after-care of students also survived, with later principals continuing her custom of regular correspondence and an annual retreat that included workshops on educational developments – and ideas and themes for religious teaching.
In 1961, under Sr St John, new halls of residence were opened in St Michael’s Hamlet, an inner suburb of Liverpool. This, and the advent of secular members of staff, to supplement and eventually outnumber the sisters on the staff, changed the atmosphere but not the ethos of the college. In the early 1970s men appeared among the students.
It was around this time that student numbers began to fall and the three voluntary teacher-training colleges in Liverpool came together. Collaboration in academic subjects came first; then in 1980 the two Catholic colleges amalgamated as Christ’sNotre Dame College. When the Mount Pleasant site was sold it seemed a disaster to all who loved the college. But eventually out of this change and the speedy amalgamation with the Anglican college, St Katharine’s, came the Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, to be transformed itself into Liverpool Hope University College. Last year this became Liverpool Hope University, the only European university founded on ecumenical Christian principles.
Sr Mary of St Philip’s dedication, in faith, hope and love, with all the sisters who followed her, has found what can now be seen as its great reward in an institution of higher education which has those three words as its motto.
*** Sr Catherine Hughes joined the staff of Mount Pleasant College in 1953. She was General Moderator of the Sisters of Notre Dame from 1984 to 1990.
source: http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1...ry-calling
http://www.danielklongman.com/liverpools...otre-dame/
Liverpool’s Own Piece of Notre Dame
by Dan
Liverpool John Moores University has a number of buildings across the city used for the education of both home-grown and international students. One such site, ‘The John Foster Building’ stands at the top of Mount Pleasant. It was once a teacher training college set up in 1856 to provide the education of Catholic school mistresses by the ‘Sisters of Notre Dame’.
It was in this year that five members of the group travelled from the Belgium town of Namur and settled amongst the Liverpool people. Their purpose was to educate the girls of England and to nurture the religious upbringing of the poor and needy. The building set up for the task became known as the ‘Training School of Notre Dame’ or simply, ‘Mount Pleasant’ due to its location.
The building itself was constructed the previous year to the designs of the architect Charles Hansom with a chapel being added the following decade by M.E Hadfield. Its current name stems from the fact city surveyor John Foster Junior (c.1786-1846) once lived at an adjoining property at No. 82.
Members of the excellent community site ‘Mr. Seel’s Garden’ interviewed ex-convent employee Anna Ryan earlier this year. She worked in the kitchens during the 1960’s. Her memories of her time there can be heard via this link:
http://www.mrseelsgarden.org/stories-of-local-food.html
via: http://www.danielklongman.com/liverpools...otre-dame/
Liverpool’s Own Piece of Notre Dame
by Dan
Liverpool John Moores University has a number of buildings across the city used for the education of both home-grown and international students. One such site, ‘The John Foster Building’ stands at the top of Mount Pleasant. It was once a teacher training college set up in 1856 to provide the education of Catholic school mistresses by the ‘Sisters of Notre Dame’.
It was in this year that five members of the group travelled from the Belgium town of Namur and settled amongst the Liverpool people. Their purpose was to educate the girls of England and to nurture the religious upbringing of the poor and needy. The building set up for the task became known as the ‘Training School of Notre Dame’ or simply, ‘Mount Pleasant’ due to its location.
The building itself was constructed the previous year to the designs of the architect Charles Hansom with a chapel being added the following decade by M.E Hadfield. Its current name stems from the fact city surveyor John Foster Junior (c.1786-1846) once lived at an adjoining property at No. 82.
Members of the excellent community site ‘Mr. Seel’s Garden’ interviewed ex-convent employee Anna Ryan earlier this year. She worked in the kitchens during the 1960’s. Her memories of her time there can be heard via this link:
http://www.mrseelsgarden.org/stories-of-local-food.html
via: http://www.danielklongman.com/liverpools...otre-dame/
I found Her!
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