Cardinal Vaughan and Westminster Cathedral

A current project being undertaken by one of our volunteers is the detailed cataloguing of Cardinal Vaughan's letters. Those in the archive seem to have been used very little by researchers -probably because the original catalogue is so poor! We hope to have an improved catalogue available online within the next year.

This newly discovered letter from Vaughan to his secretary, Mgr Dunn reveals his personal care for every detail of building the new Westminster Cathedral, and the occasional perils of being a Cardinal's  secretary.

September 17 1902

“In my room, in a corner near the stand up desk, is a basket full of stones from old Cathedrals and Abbey Churches.....there are missing from the Cathedrals -Canterbury, Hereford and Westminster Abbey Church -and perhaps some others...write to the priests in Hereford and Canterbury in my name, say we have all the old Cathedrals except so and so. Hereford will be very easy to get, because in the cloister there is a great heap of stones taken out of the old building. As we only want a few inches of the old material -it ought not to be difficult to pick up something in Westminster Abbey also.

Next, take a hammer and divide each stone into 3 pieces -one to go into the cement or grouting of the High Altar, one for the Blessed Sacrament Altar, and a third from the Lady Altar. There are some larger stones, finials etc -which might be kept for the Lady Altar as entire as possible and so arranged in building up the side of the altar as to be visible to any one looking at it for that purpose.”

So far we have not been able to discover whether Vaughan managed to collect all the Cathedrals, whether the stones were in fact cemented into the new cathedral altars and if poor Mgr Dunn was sent to Westminster Abbey under cover of darkness with a hammer and chisel. Any further information would be appreciated!

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

As we sort and appraise papers in the archive for cataloguing, occasionally information comes to light that saves us a considerable amount of work. Here is an item level list of volume E11 which we think was prepared by Elizabeth Poyser who was diocesan archivist from 1969 to 1980. This is a bound volume of letters which appear to have belonged to Henry Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York. Here is a part of her description of the whole collection:

"The whole set appear to have belonged to the Cardinal York, and
fall into two lots, pp.1-148 and 149-506.

The latter are letters from Lady H Webb at Paris to the Cardinal,
from 12 Nov. 1764 to 27 Oct. 1766, mostly written once a
week. At the beginning are some letters to her, sent on to
Rome, including some which appear to be from the Young Pretender
or some servant. Clearly many enclosures do not now
survive. Till 1766 they deal with efforts to reconcile the
Pretender to his father and brother, also news of French
Court, etc. From July 1766 (thereis a gap between Jan. and
July 1766) there are copies of the Cardinal's replies alternating
with Lady Webb's letters, detailing efforts to reform
the Pretender's drinking habits, etc. At p. 503 there is
reference to a Webb letter of 20 Oct. which is missing and
probably corresponds to the four missing pages; clearly an
important letter referring to an impertinent query, possibly
on matrimonial affairs.

The former are a mixed set, the bulk falling between autumn 1765
and summer 1766, but five documents date from 1763, 1767 (2),
1769 and 1771. There are some letters of the Young Pretender
to Cardinal York on their reconciliation, and others
dealing with the Cardinal's efforts to obtain recognition
for his brother from the Vatican."

We can't make any guarantees as to the complete accuracy of the list and we hope that it will eventually be improved and become part of our online catalogue.