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 1895: The Dowager Duchess chose a suitable location at Woodford Wells, in the Epping Forest area, to establish a Franciscan friary, parish church and a school for young children. |
One of the great architects of Catholic Expansion in London and the south-east was Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (1832 - 1903) who founded seminaries, churches and especially schools. The Cardinal did much to secure the Education Act of 1902 which obtained State Aid for Catholic Education. He also saw the need for the church to establish itself in the growing suburbs around London. Both he and the Duchess of Newcastle believed Woodford was a potential area for such Catholic expansion.
In 1748 a visiting Swedish botanist Peter Kalm wrote of Woodford: "The inhabitants are partly farmers but still more Gentlemen who live on the money from their property." Kalm's description is correct.
Woodford, lying on a ridge of land running north and south between the rivers Lea and Roding, was a manorial village which grew sluggishly over the centuries. By 1762 Woodford was made up of 178 houses and 156 of these could be classed as mansions. Over the next hundred years little changed. In the London Gazetteer of 1865, Woodford is described, "as a district of citizens' villas on the Epping Road with a population of 4,609. The parish there is of great extent, there is no village proper but instead are four distinctly and widely separated cluster of houses: Woodford or Church End; Woodford Green; Woodford Wells and Woodford Bridge. Woodford Wells can be described as a mixture of modern cottage and villa residences, owing its name to medicinal springs formerly in repute for many diseases but which were a century ago already neglected. The hamlet has a cheerful old-fashioned country aspect."
Accordingly there seems little in this sleepy hamlet, new railway or not, to attract the attention of Henrietta the Dowager Duchess of Newcastle.
However, a closer study of this formidable woman shows that Henrietta more than justified Christ's desire that the "children of the light be as wise and prudent in their dealings as the children of this world2. Henrietta was born in 1843 at Deepdene, a beautiful estate at Boxhill in Surrey, the only and beloved daughter of the merchant Henry Thomas Hope whose family once owned the famous diamond called after their name. In 1861, at the age of 18, Henrietta married Lord Lincoln, later the 5th Duke of Newcastle by whom she had two sons and three daughters. In 1879 the Duke died and, in the same year Henrietta, who had always been identified with the most advanced section of Anglicanism, was received into the Catholic Church.
In 1880 Henrietta re-married Thomas Theobald-Hobart (obit. 1892): Henrietta became a leading Catholic figure in London and was a firm friend of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan on his transfer to Westminster in 1892. Vaughan encouraged Henrietta's growing absorption with the poor in London's East End. She left her mansion in Hill Street, Berkeley Square and moved to a house she named St. Anthony's in Great Prestcott Street by Tower Hill. (1893). Henrietta, who had often been associated with many Catholic charities, deeply admired the Sisters of the Holy Family of Bordeaux who worked amongst the poor Catholic girls and young women in the East End of London, founding an association to keep them off the streets and train them in cooking, needlework and other domestic skills.
Henrietta used her own house and another in Great Prescott Street to become actively involved in this work. She was joined by two other ladies and they took the name of the Ladies of Charities of St. Vincent de Paul. High society in London regarded her as rather eccentric and when Lady Paget asked her "were it not better to help those who tried to help themselves?" Henrietta replied that she loved the worst cases and Lady Paget's advice would not provide her with sufficient excitement.
Nevertheless, Henrietta had a shrewd brain, contrary to the description of her in Pall Mall magazine, as being "completely given up to good works in the East End", her obituary in the Woodford Times, 9th March 1915, described her as follows: "She had a very artistic nature and a keen perception of all things beautiful and was an enthusiastic musician. She was practical and businesslike, seeing that organisations under her superintendence were working decently and in order. She was greatly loved by all who knew her