Augustinian Canonesses at Ealing

In 1911, the English Augustinian convent at Neuilly, on the outskirts of Paris was forced to leave France as Catholic educational establishments were closed by laws separating church and state. The canonesses settled in Ealing and built themselves a new home which survives today as St Augustine's Priory School.

A brief history can be found on the school website but, for anyone interested, the entire community archive from its foundation in 1634 to closure in the 1990s is held here in the archive.

The community journals describe some incidents of everyday life in Ealing:

"Great excitement during recreation. A box tied with string and thrown over the fence along Hill Crest Rd. was found to contain a large hedge-hog, and this in turn, led to the discovery of a "nest", complete with father, mother and no less than five "baby" hedge-hogs -dear little creatures -(to some!)"

By Calle Eklund/V-wolf (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons