The origins of the community

Our English community was founded by Susan Hawley in 1642. At that time Catholic education was not possible for girls in England because of the Penal Laws, so Susan Hawley went to the Low Countries. The Community has been in England since 1794.

1642 Permission by the prince Bishop of Liege for the English nuns to found a house of Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre	Above is Sr. Mary Stephen’s pictorial representation of our Order’s history from the empty tomb (at bottom) to our own Community’s founding and early years in Belgium (17th and 18th centuries) to its move to England (after the upheavals of the French Revolution), settling at New Hall (Chelmsford) in 1799, then at the very top, our ongoing history today, in three locations in Essex.