A former Convent of Poor Clares is located in

Woodchester Woodchester is a Gloucestershire village in the Nailsworth (or Woodchester) Valley, a valley in the South Cotswolds in England, running southwards from Stroud along the A46 road to Nailsworth. The parish population taken at the 2011 census w ...

, near

Stroud Stroud is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District. The town's population was 13,500 in 2021. Sited below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at the meeting point of the ...

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

. The convent was home to nuns of the

Poor Clares The Poor Clares, officially the Order of Saint Clare (Latin language, Latin: ''Ordo Sanctae Clarae''), originally referred to as the Order of Poor Ladies, and also known as the Clarisses or Clarissines, the Minoresses, the Franciscan Clarist Or ...

order from 1850 to 2011. The convent is based around a 17th-century house that was enlarged in the 1850s. The dedicated convent buildings were built between 1861 and 1869 by

Charles Francis Hansom Charles Francis Hansom (27 July 1817 – 30 November 1888) was a prominent Roman Catholic Victorian architect who primarily designed in the Gothic Revival style. Career He was born to a Roman Catholic family in York. He was the brother of Jo ...

. A separate guest house was built around 1870 by Canon Scoles. The convent is

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

on the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, ...

. The convent originally belonged to a Franciscan order before its adoption by the Poor Clares. Five sisters of the Poor Clares order remained at the convent's dissolution; they subsequently moved to a Poor Clares convent in

Lynton Lynton is a town on the Exmoor coast in the North Devon district in the county of Devon, England, approximately north-east of Barnstaple and west of Minehead, and close to the confluence of the West Lyn and East Lyn rivers. Lynton sits dire ...

, North Devon. Poor Clares exiled from France in 1904 joined Franciscan nuns at Woodchester. The convent at Woodchester was built in the 1860s; at its zenith, the convent housed 30 nuns after the Second World War, but it had declined to 12 mostly elderly nuns by 1998. Duff Hart-Davis visited the convent for a 1998 article in ''

The Independent on Sunday ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

'' and met the Mother Abbess, Sister Mary Anthony, and a Sister Mary Therese. Hart-Davis reported that the nuns' primary source of income was the production of altar breads, of which they made five million a year, earning them £25,000. The nuns also had a vegetable garden and an orchard and kept bees, cows, and chickens. Hart-Davis also wrote about the nuns' Christmas celebrations and reported that they did not have a television, but borrowed one for Christmas and Easter. The Poor Clares donated their library from the Woodchester convent to

Durham University Library The Durham University Library is the centrally administered library of Durham University in England and is part of the university's Library and Collections department. Its two main libraries are Palace Green Library and the Bill Bryson Library. ...

. Durham's holdings comprise 485 titles from the Woodchester Convent, dating from the 16th to the 19th century, with the majority of books from the Poor Clares convent in Princehof near

Bruges Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...

. The books are mostly devotional in nature. Since the convent's closure, the buildings have been used as a boutique hotel, restaurant and live music venue.

References

{{Coord, 51.7112, -2.2345, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title 2011 disestablishments in England Buildings and structures in Stroud Christian monasteries established in the 16th century Convents in England Grade II listed monasteries Grade II listed buildings in Gloucestershire Grade II listed Roman Catholic churches in England Monasteries in Gloucestershire Poor Clare monasteries in England Roman Catholic churches in Gloucestershire