THE ARRIVAL OF THE HOLY FAMILY SISTERS IN NEWBRIDGE, 1875.

The founder of the Holy Family Association, Fr Pierre Bienvenu Noailles, had been a great friend of Mgr. Charles de Mazenod, Bishop of Marseilles and founder of the Oblate Order (1826). After Fr. Noailles died in 1861, a union took place between the Oblate Sisters and the Holy Family Congregation in 1868. The Holy Family Sisters came to Leeds in England to take over the faltering Oblate mission there. In 1869 they established a novitiate in Rock Ferry, Cheshire, from where, six years later, the first Holy Family mission to Ireland set out for Newbridge.

On 26 May, 1875, four sisters left Rock Ferry at 10am, and travelled from Holyhead to Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire). They were Mother Mary St John Day; Sister Mary Gertrude du Sacre Coeur Farrell; Sister Mary St Alban Horan; and Sister Mary Joseph Egan. They were met in Kingstown by the Oblate Provincial, Fr Robert Cooke. After tea and a rest at Morrison’s Hotel, they got the train to Newbridge from Kingsbridge Station. Fr Cooke travelled with them, and they were met at the station in Newbridge by the Parish Priest, Fr Martin Nowlan and his curate, Fr Thomas O’Neill. Horse-drawn cabs brought them to the Parish Priest’s house for tea before they took possession of their new convent nearby.

But why did the Holy Family sisters come to Newbridge? Just prior to this, Fr Cooke, the Oblate Provincial, had been giving a retreat in the Newbridge parish, and the Parish Priest, Fr Martin Nowlan, was so impressed with his preaching that  he urged the bishop to invite the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (the Holy Family Sisters) to take up residency in the recently built Convent next door. The Convent had been designed by John O’Callaghan, an important architect of the time – churches in Naas, Athy, Mountmellick and Clifden, as well as the building at the junction of Westmoreland and D’Olier St in Dublin. The foundation stone was laid on Ascension Sunday, 22 May 1873, by the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Most Rev. Dr Walsh.

Within a very short time, the nuns had started a ‘middle school’ in the convent, and were visiting the poor and the sick in the locality, as well as conducting catechism classes in the church next door. In 1876, the Parish Priest gave them management of the Female School in the town.

Sources:

Journal of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, St Conleth’s Abbey, Newbridge.

J.J. O’Callaghan File, Irish Architectural Archive, Merrion Sq, Dublin.

Ryan, Maura, The Holy Family Sisters in Newbridge, 1875-2000. (September 2000).

WHAT ELSE WAS HAPPENING while all this was happening in Newbridge?

In Ireland......

1869    Church of Ireland was disestablished.

1870    Gladstone’s First Home Rule Bill.

1873    Home Rule League.

1879    Land League was founded.

1881    Gladstone’s Second Home Rule Bill.

1884    GAA was founded.

Elsewhere in the world.....

1869    First Vatican Council (Papal Infallibility proclaimed).

            Suez Canal opened.

1876    Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India.

            Battle of Little Bighorn; Custer and the 7^th Cavalry defeated.