Ushaw: Historic House, Chapels & Gardens | |
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Formerly Ushaw College | |
54°47′17″N1°39′40″W / 54.78818°N 1.66116°W | |
Location | Ushaw Moor, Durham |
Country | UK |
Denomination | Roman Catholic |
Website | www |
History | |
Former name(s) | English College, Douai |
Status | Theological College |
Founded | September 29, 1568 |
Founder(s) | Bishop William Gibson |
Dedication | Saint Cuthbert |
Consecrated | September 1808 |
Architecture | |
Functional status | Closed as college, open as visitor attraction |
Heritage designation | Grade II with parts Grade II* and St Michael's Chapel Grade I [1] |
Designated | 17 January 1967 (main block and college chapel; other parts, including St Michael's Chapel, added 24 June 1987) |
Architect(s) | James Taylor Dunn and Hansom |
Style | Gothic Revival |
Groundbreaking | 23 April 1804 |
Completed | 2 August 1808 |
Closed | June 2011 |
Administration | |
Province | Liverpool |
Diocese | Hexham and Newcastle |
Episcopal area | Sunderland and East Durham |
Deanery | St Cuthbert |
Parish | St Joseph's, Ushaw Moor |
Ushaw College (formally St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw) is a former Catholic seminary, which until 2011 was also a licensed hall of residence of Durham University near the village of Ushaw Moor, County Durham, England, which is now a heritage and cultural tourist attraction. The college is known for its Georgian and Victorian Gothic architecture and listed nineteenth-century chapels. The college now hosts a programme of art exhibitions, music and theatre events, alongside tearooms and a café.
It was founded in 1808 by scholars from the English College, Douai, who had fled France after the French Revolution. Ushaw College was affiliated with Durham University from 1968 and was the principal Roman Catholic seminary for the training of Catholic priests in the north of England.
In 2011, the seminary closed, due to the shortage of vocations. It reopened as a visitor attraction, marketed as Ushaw: Historic House, Chapels & Gardens in late 2014 and, as of 2023, receives over 100,000 visitors a year. The County Durham Music Service and Durham University Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring are based at the college and buildings at the college are also used by Durham University Business School. [2] [3]
The English College, Douai was founded in 1568 but was forced to leave France in 1795 following the French Revolution. Part of the college settled temporarily at Crook Hall near Lanchester, northwest of Durham. In 1804 Bishop William Gibson began to build at Ushaw Moor, four miles west of Durham. These buildings, designed by James Taylor, were opened as St Cuthbert's College in 1808. There was a steady expansion during the nineteenth century with new buildings put up to cater for the expanding number of clerical and secular students. In 1847, the newly built chapel, designed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was opened. [4] This was followed by the Big Library and Exhibition Hall designed by Joseph Hansom, 1849–1851. [5] The Junior House, designed by Peter Paul Pugin, was added in 1859. St Cuthbert's Chapel, designed by Dunn and Hansom, was opened in 1884, replacing AWN Pugin's 1847 chapel which the seminary had outgrown. The Refectory was designed and built by E. W. Pugin. The final development came in the early 1960s with the opening of a new East wing, providing additional classrooms and single bedrooms for 75 students. The main college buildings are Grade II listed, the College Chapel is Grade II* and the Chapel of St Michael is Grade I.
Although independent, Ushaw College had a close working relationship with Durham University. The college became a Licensed Hall of Residence of the University of Durham in 1968. It was independent of the university but offered courses validated by the university, and both Church and lay students studied at the college. The Junior House closed in 1972, its younger students being transferred to St Joseph's College, Up Holland in Lancashire.
In 2002, the college rejected a report from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it should merge with St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. [6] However, in October 2010 it was announced that the college would close in 2011 due to the shortage of vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, and that the site might be sold. [7] Following a detailed feasibility study by the college's Trustees and Durham University, and with support from Durham County Council and English Heritage, [8] [9] it was announced in January 2012 that Durham Business School would temporarily relocate to the college during rebuilding of the school's buildings in Durham. This was seen as the first step in a long-term education-based vision for the site. [10]
The university also agreed to catalogue and archive the Ushaw library and inventory the other collections to ensure their preservation and specialist conservation, [11] with a view to creating a proposed Ushaw Centre for Catholic Scholarship and Heritage. [8] In March 2019, an uncatalogued early charter of King John was found in the library manuscript collection. [12]
In 2017, Durham University announced plans to develop an international residential research library at Ushaw College, with the aim of attracting scholars from around the world to work on the collections of Ushaw, Durham University and Durham Cathedral. The university has also confirmed that it has extended the agreement to lease the east wing of the college (used by the Business School) to 2027. [13] The college is also used for numerous musical events and for the Ushaw Lecture Series, organised by the university's Centre for Catholic Studies. [14]
In 2018, Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) moved into the east wing of the college, previously used by the Business School. [3]
The Junior Seminary Chapel of St Aloysius and adjacent common room buildings were badly damaged in a suspected arson attack in July 2023. [15]
The college armorial bearings are "Per pale dexter Argent a Cross Gules on a Canton Azure a Cross of St Cuthbert proper sinister impaling Allen Argent three Rabbits couchant in pale Sable."
Various emblems on shield represent the college's history and foundation, for example:-
Clergy
Lay
John Lingard was an English Catholic priest and historian, the author of The History of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII, an eight-volume work published in 1819. Lingard was a teacher at the English College at Douai, and at the seminary at Crook Hall, and later St. Cuthbert's College. In 1811 he retired to Hornby in Lancashire to continue work on his writing.
William Allen, also known as Guilielmus Alanus or Gulielmus Alanus, was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an ordained priest, but was never a bishop. His main role was setting up colleges to train English missionary priests with the mission of returning secretly to England to keep Roman Catholicism alive there. Allen assisted in the planning of the Spanish Armada's attempted invasion of England in 1588. It failed badly, but if it had succeeded he would probably have been made Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. The Douai-Rheims Bible, a complete translation into English from Latin, was printed under Allen's orders. His activities were part of the Counter Reformation, but they led to an intense response in England and in Ireland. He advised and recommended Pope Pius V to pronounce Elizabeth I deposed. After the Pope declared her excommunicated and deposed, Elizabeth intensified the persecution of her Roman Catholic religious opponents.
The Cathedral Church of St Mary is a Catholic cathedral in Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear, England. It is the mother church of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle and seat of the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle. The cathedral, situated on Clayton Street, was designed by Augustus Welby Pugin and built between 1842 and 1844. The cathedral is a grade I listed building and a fine example of the Gothic Revival style of architecture championed by Pugin.
Cuthbert Mayne was an English Catholic priest executed under the laws of Elizabeth I. He was the first of the seminary priests trained on the Continent to be martyred. Mayne was beatified in 1886 and canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970.
The Diocese of Westminster is a Latin archdiocese of the Catholic Church in England. The diocese consists of most of London north of the River Thames and west of the River Lea, the borough of Spelthorne, and the county of Hertfordshire, which lies immediately to London's north.
The Archdiocese of Liverpool is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church that covers the Isle of Man and part of North West England. The episcopal see is Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. The archdiocese is the centre of the Ecclesiastical Province of Liverpool which covers the north of England as well as the Isle of Man.
The Archdiocese of Southwark is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in England. It is led by the Archbishop of Southwark. The archdiocese is part of the Metropolitan Province of Southwark, which covers the South of England. The Southwark archdiocese also makes up part of the Catholic Association Pilgrimage.
St Mary's College in New Oscott, Birmingham, sometimes called Oscott College, is the Roman Catholic seminary of the Archdiocese of Birmingham in England and one of two seminaries of the Catholic Church in England and Wales in England, with Allen Hall Seminary in London.
St Edmund's College is a coeducational private day and boarding school in the British public school tradition, set in 440 acres (1.8 km2) in Ware, Hertfordshire. Founded in 1568 as a seminary, then a boys' school, it is the oldest continuously operating and oldest post-Reformation Catholic school in the country. Today it caters for boys and girls aged 3 to 18.
The English College was a Catholic seminary in Douai, France, associated with the University of Douai. It was established in 1568, and was suppressed in 1793. It is known for a Bible translation referred to as the Douay–Rheims Bible. Of over 300 British priests who studied at the English College, about one-third were executed after returning home.
William Godfrey was an English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster and de facto primate of England and Wales from 1956 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1958.
Francis Alphonsus Bourne (1861–1935) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as the fourth Archbishop of Westminster from 1903 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1911.
William Turner (1799–1872) was an English Roman Catholic prelate who served as the first Bishop of Salford from 1851 to 1872. After his ordination to the priesthood, he served in the poorer parishes of central Manchester, and was appointed Vicar General for the Lancashire District.
The Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church, centred on St Mary's Cathedral in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in England. The diocese is one of the six suffragan sees in the ecclesiastical Province of Liverpool and covers the historic boundaries of County Durham and Northumberland.
Thomas Henshaw (1873–1938) was the fifth Bishop of Salford, a Roman Catholic diocese in the north-west of England.
Ushaw Moor is an old pit village in County Durham, in England, on the north side of the River Deerness. It is situated to the west of Durham, a short distance to the south of Bearpark. Ushaw Moor falls within the Deerness electoral ward in the City of Durham constituency, whose MP since 2019 has been Mary Foy.
William Gibson was an English Catholic prelate who served as Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District from 1790 to 1821. He was previously president of the English College, Douai from 1781 to 1790.
Bernard O’Reilly (1824–1894) was an Irish-born prelate who served as the third Roman Catholic Bishop of Liverpool from 1873 until his death in 1894.
John Wilson is an English prelate of the Catholic Church, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Southwark. He had previously served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Westminster (2016–2019).
St Mary's Church or the Church of the Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic Parish church in Headland, Hartlepool, County Durham, England. It was built in 1850 and designed by Joseph Hansom in the Gothic Revival style. It is located on Durham Street, behind Hartlepool Borough Hall. It was the first Catholic church to be built in Hartlepool since the Reformation, and it is a Grade II listed building.