Women’s religious communities and patronage in the UK

Two case studies

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17979/aarc.2024.11.11340

Keywords:

nuns, convents, monasteries, patronage, sacred architecture

Abstract

This paper discusses women as architectural clients through an examination of Roman Catholic nuns as patrons, designers and in some cases builders of religious architecture. The paper offers two case studies to explore the roles that women assumed in religious communities: the first, a chapel commissioned and built by a community of Carmelite nuns in Wales during the 1950s and the second, a recently completed abbey in the North of England. The examples highlight the evolution of female agency in the built environment and how this has been impacted by the professionalisation of architecture.

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Author Biography

Kate Jordan, University of Westminster

Kate Jordan is a Reader in the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster, London. She has published widely on modern-era faith architecture with recent publications on contemporary church architecture in the journals Architecture and Culture; Architectural Histories; the Journal of Architecture and the Journal of Architectural Conservation. She contributed a chapter on nineteenth-century Roman Catholic architecture «Building the post-emancipation church» in the recently published Oxford History of Catholicism in Britain and Ireland. She is the co-editor of the volume Architecture for Religious Communities: Building the Kingdom, published by Routledge in 2018 and more recently, guest editor of a special issue of Architecture and Culture, entitled «Spiritual, sacred secular: places of faith in the twenty-first century». She is currently leading a research project funded by the Royal Institute of British Architects, entitled «Moving pictures: reusing cinemas as places of worship in the diaspora».

References

A Member of the Society. 1922. The Life of Cornelia Connelly 1809-1879: Foundress of the Society of Holy Child Jesus. London/New York: Longmans, Green & Co.

Brittain-Catlin, Timothy. 2006. «A.W.N. Pugin’s English convent plans», Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 65/3: 356-377. https://doi.org/10.2307/25068293

Butt, Riazat. 2008. «Get thee to a nunnery – just make sure it has an eco loo», The Guardian, December 1st. Accessed 2024/08/21, https://bit.ly/3XUCJCG

Jordan, Kate. 2016. «Spotless Lilies and Foul Smelling Weeds: Architecture and Moral Cleanliness in Victorian Magdalene Convents», RIBA online, accessed 2024/08/21, https://bit.ly/3NgTV0f

Jordan, Kate. 2018. «The ‘Building Sisters’ of Presteigne: Gender, Innovation and Tradition in Modern-Era Roman Catholic Architecture», in Modern Architecture and Religious Communities: Building the Kingdom, edited by Kate Jordan & Ayla Lepine, 123-139. Abingdon: Routledge.

Jordan, Kate. 2023a. «Architecture and Buildings: Building the post-emancipation church», in The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, vol IV. Building Identity, 1830-1913 edited by Carmen M. Mangion and Susan O’Brien, 56-76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jordan, Kate. 2023b. «Modernity and monasticism: Roman and Anglo-Catholic monasteries in the twentieth century», in Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland: 1929-1990, edited by P.S. Barnwell and Allan Doig, 128-152. Donington: Shaun Tyas.

Mangion, Carmen M. 2014. Contested Identities: Catholic women religious in nineteenth-century England and Wales. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Pizarro Miranda, Bernardo. 2015. «The Spirit of the Catholic Aggiornamento: Architecture, Dialogue and Active Participation», Actas de Arquitectura Religiosa Contemporánea 4: 108-115. https://doi.org/10.17979/aarc.2015.4.0.5126

Sokol-Gojnik, Zorana, Igor Gojnik & Ante Crncevic. 2023. «The Collaboration between Client and Architects on the Construction of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Zagreb, Croatia». Actas de Arquitectura Religiosa Contemporánea 10: 80-93. https://doi.org/10.17979/aarc.2023.10.0.10183

Sullivan, Mary C., ed. 2004. The correspondence of Catherine McAuley, 1818-1841. Washington DC.: The Catholic University of America Press.

Wadham, Juliana. 1957. The Case of Cornelia Connelly. New York: Pantheon.

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Published

2024-10-25

How to Cite

Jordan, K. (2024). Women’s religious communities and patronage in the UK: Two case studies. Actas De Arquitectura Religiosa Contemporánea, 11, 102–115. https://doi.org/10.17979/aarc.2024.11.11340

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