The Preacher’s Nun’s Tale
Roger Guttridge with an everyday story of religious folk
Published in July ’18
From the annals of early Victorian Dorset comes a disturbing story that seems deserving of a Chaucerian title. I heard it ten years ago from Barbara Marriott, who in turn had unearthed it while researching the history of Methodism in Wimborne. In its day the story featured in a speech in the Lords and a report in The Times.
During a coach journey from Bath to Wimborne in about 1840, Stalbridge-born schoolmaster Peter Hawke fell into conversation with a fellow passenger, whom he described as a ‘country woman, young and in good health’. She told him she was from Ireland and was on her way to join the Cistercian Trappist nunnery at Stapehill Abbey, having been ‘long been concerned about her spiritual state’. Hawke was also concerned, but not for her spiritual welfare. The founder and driving force of Wimborne Methodist Church knew something of the Stapehill nunnery and tried to persuade the young woman to reconsider. But her mind was made up.
By the time the coach reached Wimborne, it was dark and Hawke was also worried about the safety of ‘this simple-minded creature’ as she prepared to walk alone to Stapehill. She initially refused help but after alighting from the coach was suddenly ‘overcome by the darkness of the night and the fatigue from the journey’ and agreed to spend the night with the Hawke family. She was strangely afraid to join in their prayers and remained seated while they knelt. ‘We thought it proper,’ Hawke wrote, ‘to remind her of the rigid character of the La Trappe Order she was about to join. But she expressed herself, on hearing this, as rather pleased than otherwise and as willing to suffer anything such a situation could afford.’
Next morning, after again trying to persuade their guest to ‘pray for divine guidance about her future’, the Hawke family bade the young woman farewell as she set off for Holy Cross Abbey. Over the next few months they inquired several times about her welfare, only to receive ‘absurd answers’ due to the new names given to novice nuns after their arrival. So they were surprised when, eight months later, the young nun turned up on their doorstep.
‘Very readily did she accept the invitation to walk in and take her seat in the midst of our family,’ wrote the Methodist preacher. ‘Her statement was that she had that morning made her escape from Stapehill, unknown to anyone at the convent, and she assigned as her reason for this that the system was too rigid and she could stand it
no longer.’
The nun said she’d been living on a diet of bread and beer twice a day and had never seen a fire even in the coldest winter months. She was expected to rise at 2am each morning to attend devotions, which were repeated two or three times before daylight. ‘Her intention,’ said Hawke, ‘was to make her way back to Ireland, where her friends, especially a brother she had there, would be most happy to receive her. She knew not how to accomplish such a design, as she had no money at all. Begging her way seemed the only means within her power.’
After a few days at Wimborne, the nun was sent with a carrier to Salisbury with a letter of introduction asking a friend of the Hawkes to accommodate her for the night. She would then travel to Bristol and board a ship to Ireland. She was given enough money to cover her fares and promised to repay it once she got home. But the money never arrived and neither did news of her safe arrival. ‘To this day the fate of this young woman remains a mystery to us,’ wrote Hawke ten years later. ‘It was reported, some time after, that she had been retaken in her journey and brought back to Stapehill, but we had no means of ascertaining the truth of this. We endeavoured by different means to learn if such a person was in the Stapehill Convent but our enquiries were to no purpose. We soon learned that there was a profound secrecy kept up as to everything done within
the walls of that place – a secrecy that cannot but
awaken suspicion.’
In 1850, the Earl of Shaftesbury read Hawke’s letter in the House of Lords to support his case that nunneries should be opened up. His speech was reported in The Times. Peter Hawke expressed his hope that, ‘in this free country, this land of liberty … there shall not be a single establishment in which any portion of the human family … shall be deprived of their liberty, which is the birthright of man and which may be regarded as equally dear with
life itself.’
Stapehill’s nunnery opened in 1802 and closed in 1989. Victorian censuses show that the vast majority of the nuns were born in Ireland. The nuns are said to have toiled ceaselessly in the early years to bring the site under cultivation, digging drainage ditches and clearing the heathland with pickaxes. Much of the complex was destroyed by fire in 1818 and legend has it that the flames only subsided when the Reverend Mother threw in a relic of the true Cross – which was later found intact under the ashes. The listed buildings later became a tourist attraction but were recently converted to housing.
