Convent of Mercy Chapel (Private), Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire, Church History

Gloucestershire Places of Worship

Default Image Sorry, we do not have an Image of this Place of Worship

We do not have a
Photograph at present.
Image by courtesy of
openclipart.org

Convent of Mercy Chapel (Private), Westbury on Trym

Convent of Mercy Chapel (Private),
Brecon Road, BS9 4DT,
Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire.

Cemeteries

This Chapel had a graveyard.
Note: any church within an urban environment may have had its graveyard closed after the Burial Act of 1853. Any new church built after that is unlikely to have had a graveyard at all.

Church History

This Place of Worship was founded in 1846, but we understand it was closed in 1939.

Old Maps of 1881 show the area now occupied by the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and St Ursula's School (now E-ACT Academy), as the site of "The Monastery". By 1903, it has become the Convent of Mercy, which has its own Chapel, and a small graveyard adjacent to, and on the south-west side of the Chapel.
The Monastery was evidently a misnomer for a Convent, which was built for the Visitation Order, a community of nuns founded at Annecy in Savoy in 1610 which had been introduced to England in 1804. A house named "Westmead" was purchased from Mr. Irving, a Methodist minister in 1831, and according to an article published in The Catholic Heald of 4th October 1946, four nuns arrived "at this date 100 years ago" from Bermondsey "to begin the work for which they are now so well known". The choir, chapel and cloisters were the first buildings to be erected.
The return to the Religious Census of 1851 (HO 129/330/5/1/6) may well apply to the chapel, though it is not named as such. "There is not any place of public Religious Worship in the place in which I reside - but there is a private chapel belonging to the house used by the inmates who are a Society of Ladies living in Community to whom I am Chaplain", signed by L. Maes, B.D.
At a later date, presumably, the chapel was made available to the local Catholic community to attend mass.
The first school was opened in 1868, in a converted stable and coach house, the teachers being provided by the Sisters of St Joseph of Annecy. When the Sisters of Mercy took over the convent and school in 1896, it was renamed St Ursula's.
By the 1930s, a new church was needed to relieve overcrowding, and "the Reverend Mother at the time gave the diocese a plot of land for a church and presbytery". The building was completed in 1939 and blessed by Bishop Lee on 13 September.
The Convent celebrated its centenary in 1946, as recorded in an article "Sisters of Mercy, A Century of Service in Bristol published in The Catholic Herald, on 4th October 1946. See also the Church's own history available on the Sacred Heart Catholic Church website. See also St Ursula's School on Wikipedia.

Denomination

Now or formerly Roman Catholic (Convent).

If more than one congregation has worshipped here, or its congregation has united with others, in most cases this will record its original dedication.

Maps

This Chapel was located at OS grid reference ST5751376586. You can see this on various mapping systems. Note all links open in a new window:

Convent of Mercy Chapel (Private), Westbury on Trym shown on a Google Map.
Places of Worship in Westbury on Trym shown on a Google Map.
Streetmap.co.uk (arrow on map shows the Place of Worship's location) (verified 2018-10-15)
Bing (Ordnance Survey option) (verified 2018-10-13)
Bing Maps ('Bird's Eye' View) (verified 2018-10-15)
Ordnance Survey "getamap" (NB some of the 'Change Map' options may require a subscription) (verified 2018-10-15)
OpenStreetMap (Maps © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA) (verified 2018-10-15)
A Vision of Britain Through Time - useful for Boundary Changes (verified 2018-10-15)
www.magic.gov.uk (Modern Maps with various overlays) (verified 2018-10-15)

Resources

I have found many websites of use whilst compiling the information for this database. Here are some which deserve mention as being of special interest for Westbury on Trym, and perhaps to Local History and Places of Worship as a whole.

Find the article referred to via the search interface to the archive of The Catholic Herald (null) (verified 2018-11-11)
Information provided on the Sacred Heart Catholic Church website. (verified 2018-11-04)
A link to an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, on St Ursula's School (null) (verified 2018-11-22)

The above links were selected and reviewed at the time I prepared the information, but please be aware their content may vary, or disappear entirely. These factors are outside my control.

Information last updated on 7 Feb 2014 at 10:23.

Search for other Places of Worship in Gloucestershire, or in another County in this Database

Please choose a County by selecting one of the Tabs below.
Note: you MUST choose a County - searching all four at once is not an option!

Derbyshire

Gloucestershire

Herefordshire

Worcestershire

Photo	Place or OS GridRef	Dedication (optional)	Street (optional)	How Many	Denomination

Search Tips:

You can specify either a Place, or OS Grid Reference to search for. When you specify a Place, only entries for that place will be returned, with Places of Worship listed in alphabetical order. If you specify a Grid Reference, Places of Worship in the immediate vicinity will be listed, in order of distance from the Grid Reference supplied. The default is to list 10, but you can specify How Many you want to see, up to a maximum of 100.

You can further refine your search by supplying other search terms.

You can specify entries with ('Yes') or without ('No') photographs.

You can specify a church or chapel's Dedication, to restrict entries to those containing the term you supply as a dedication. So for instance, 'John' would return 'St John', 'St Mary and St John', 'St John the Divine' &c.

You can specify a Street address, and likewise 'George' will return George Place, St George's Street, George and Dragon, &c.

You can restrict the search to classes of Denomination. The exact denomination is always shown in the results, although the search is for broad types. Thus you can search for 'Methodist', but not 'Wesleyan Methodist' or 'Primitive Methodist'. 'Multi-denominational' includes Ecumenical Partnerships, and 'Miscellaneous' means anything not covered by other broad classes.

Please note the above provides a search of selected fields in the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship Database on this site (churchdb.gukutils.org.uk) only. For other counties, or for a full search of the Database, you might like to try the site's Google Custom Search, which includes full webpage content.

Further Information

This site provides historical information about churches, other places of worship and cemeteries. It has no affiliation with the churches or congregations themselves, nor is it intended to provide a means to find places of worship in the present day.

Do not copy any part of this page or website other than for personal use or as given in our Terms and Conditions of Use.

You may wish to take a look at our About the Places of Worship Database page for an overview of the information provided, and any limitations which may be present.

This Report was created 28 Nov 2024 - 17:44:21 GMT from information held in the Gloucestershire section of the Places of Worship Database. This was last updated on 13 Oct 2021 at 14:13.

URL of this page: https://churchdb.gukutils.org.uk/GLS1567.php

Logo by courtesy of the Open Clip Art Library