The Benedictines
Who was Saint Benedict?
Saint Benedict was born A.D. 480, not far from Rome. While still a young man he went to live in seclusion, at Subiaco where others attracted by his way of life joined him. Subsequently they moved to Monte Cassino, where Saint Benedict wrote his famous Rule and eventually died. Benedictine influence spread throughout Europe, indeed St. Benedict is the Patron Saint of Europe and the Order he founded is one of the oldest in the Catholic Church.
The Benedictines Begin in England
In A.D. 597 Saint Augustine and his forty Benedictine brethren landed at Ebbsfleet, on the shores of Kent, and so commences the long story of the English Benedictines which, broadly speaking, was one of success for a thousand years. It produced its harvest of saints, Anselm, Bede, Boniface, Paulinus, Wilfrid and Wulstan among them. The names of their foundations are set in English history, the more notable being Canterbury, Bath, Chester, Durham, Glastonbury, Tewkesbury and Worcester where still exists the oldest known copy of St. Benedict’s Rule. Most famous of all was Westminster where building or rebuilding never ceased from the Conquest to the Reformation.
But by the time of Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1607, its community had almost ceased to exist. Only one monk survived and he was in prison. His name was Fr. Sigebert Buckley and somehow he managed to secretly affiliate two young men into his historic community, and from these the Benedictines at Parbold can trace a direct descent.
In August 1608, those two monks, later joined by others, went to live at Dieulouard, Lorraine where they had been given a deserted collegiate church in the town. The church was dedicated to Saint Lawrence and so the monks adopted him as the patron of their community. They thrived, not as Englishmen professed into a foreign monastery, but as a community distinctly English. Known as St. Laurences, they had a church, cloister, school, farm and brewery. Saint Laurence’s held a particular attraction for Lancashire men and there was one period in the 18th century when its entire community came from between the Mersey and the Lune.
Between 1600 – 1900 Lancashire gave 279 monks to the Order of Saint Benedict, many of whom took the Mission Oath and returned to help sustain persecuted Catholicism at home. The present parishes of Brindle, Hindley, Ormskirk and Warrington owe much to those monk-missionaries of old. Even in pre-Reformation times when Lancashire was very thinly populated, there were small Benedictine foundations at Lytham, Penwortham and Upholland (St Thomas the Martyr, formerly of Canterbury).
Saint Laurence’s flourished at Dieulouard until the French Revolution. In 1793 there occurred a most violent upheaval and expulsion. Its last Prior, Richard Marsh, O.S.B. (1762-1843), of Hindley, swam the River Moselle to escape the terror. He led his homeless community over ten years of wandering, staying briefly in Shropshire, in Birkenhead, Liverpool and Prescot.
Parbold Hall
In 1802, Parbold Hall became the home of this dispossessed Benedictine Community of Dieulouard for about four months, before they finally settled at Ampleforth, in Yorkshire, at the invitation of Fr Anselm Appleton. At that time, Parbold Hall was the centre of the Catholic mission in Parbold and the incumbent of Douglas (Chapel) in 1804 sent the following report to the Bishop of Chester: ‘In the chapelry of Douglas are 67 Papists, one person, viz. Thomas Bimson, junior, perverted to Popery by marrying a Papist woman. There are three places where they assemble for worship, viz.: Wrightington Hall, Parbold Hall and Fairhurst Hall; their priests are Mr. Felix Delalond of Wrightington Hall, Mr. Marsh of Parbold Hall, and Mr. Orton of Fairhurst Hall. There is a Popish school kept at Parbold Hall by Mr. Marsh’. The ‘Popish school’ was later transferred to Ampleforth.
Parbold or Ampleforth?
Parbold seemed a splendid location and the house, just below the crown of Parbold Hill, commanded a panoramic view. There were sizeable Catholic congregations nearby who might have been expected to support its school and the question is often asked why did the Benedictines leave Parbold for Ampleforth? Fr. Cuthbert Almond, O.S.B. gives this answer “To take root it was necessary to be first possessed of the ground. This was the difficulty. Parbold Hall no more belonged to the monks than Vernon Hall, Scholes or the Tranmere Hotel had done. It was a roof to shelter but not where one could burrow or build”. Furthermore, Prior Marsh himself was anxious to rid himself of his responsibility and go on the mission.
John Bolton in Brindle in 1735, joined the St Lawrence, Dieulouard, community taking the monastic name Anselm. He was sent to the English mission in 1763 and, by 1764, was chaplain to Lord Fairfax at Gilling Castle, Yorkshire. In 1783, he bought Ampleforth Lodge, and some land so his successors would be independent of the Gilling estate. When he learned that his community were still seeking a permanent home, he made Ampleforth Lodge over to them. So, in 1802, Prior Anselm Appleton was joined by other monks to establish the Monastery which grew into Ampleforth Abbey as it stands today.
A Benedictine priest remained to serve the mission at Wrightington Hall, under the patronage of the Dicconson family and Wrightington was a Benedictine parish until the final decade of the 19th century. Other missions were maintained by the Benedictines at Park Hall, Chamock Richard (1720-1751), Ormskirk (1732), Standish (1741), Bamber Bridge (1780), Croston (1804-1818), Scarisbrick (1824) and Leyland (1845). The Secular clergy served Burscough (1700) and Mawdesley (1831).
A Church at Parbold
It was on the high tide of the Catholic Revival that the Ainscough brothers decided that Parbold ought to have its own church and in view of the foregoing it is not surprising that they wrote to Abbot Clifton, O.S.B. “We and our families have had a long connection with the Benedictines; indeed, our father and mother scarcely knew any other priests, and we should, we feel, be fulfilling their wishes as well as our own, if we can secure the new mission to be served by the Benedictines.”
Priorswood Hall
This old house in Dalton is thought to be originally connected with Burscough Priory, though in regard to its early history there is a lack of accurate detail. The Haydock Family, one of whom was killed at Agincourt, held the property in trust for the Prior and a priest’s Hiding Hole, a reminder of penal times, was found there. In 1930’s, the house and its 119 acres was purchased by the Catholic Land Association, for £3,000. The aim was to make some contribution, however small, to the problem of unemployment, then prevalent, by training a community that could work and live off the land. Practical sympathisers donated a sow, a cow, turkeys, goats, a pig, poultry and two horses. Fr. Gregory Buisseret O.S.B was appointed Warden and Mr J. Pope, farmer and market gardener, became bailiff. A room was fitted out as a chapel and dedicated to Blessed John Rigby and a crop of potatoes, rhubarb, beet, turnips, peas and carrots was harvested within a year. A crop of wheat following.
This represents much hard work by the original community, as the paths and coppices were overgrown, the outhouses derelict and some of the gardens untouched for seventeen years. But all was made festive for the official opening by Archbishop Downey, on 12 May 1935. The Archbishop remarked that it was fitting that a Benedictine monk should have charge of the project because the influence of the Benedictines had been responsible for the civilization of much of Europe through agriculture. Crowds attended from Liverpool, St Helens and Wigan and the scheme endured until 1950, when the Hall was purchased by Cyril Ainscough. Until his sudden death in 1980, he took an active interest in the Church and in civic affairs. In 1979 he was made High Sheriff of Lancashire.
Extract from Letter by Dereck Warlock, Archbishop of Liverpool, May 1984 for the Centenary
“The history of the church of Our Lady &All Saints, Parbold is a story of a particular expression of English catholic faith and religious life. The Benedictine Order has been associated with the parish from its first days and the priests have cared for the people of the area since the church was first opened 100 years ago. This history ……. conveys a sense of pride in English Catholicism, a pride in the faith tempered by persecution and difficulties in times gone by. The faith here has been lived and handed on by generations of catholic families such as the Ainscough family, who built the church (and school). Combined with the faithful service of Benedictine priests over the years, this has produced an admirable blend of Catholic fidelity and loyalty in this part of Lancashire. The church of Our Lady and All Saints reflects this fine heritage. The spirit and life of the parish today surely owes much to the building on which the life of the community is focused. If courageous faith and vision were needed to build this church a century ago, it takes the same qualities in the people of today to live up to the heritage of the parish and to express the faith in their own time and circumstances.”
Transfer of Trusteeship to the Archdiocese of Liverpool
In May 2019, after two hundred &thirty-five years, the Benedictines withdrew from serving the Parish. On 19 May 2019 the Archbishop of Liverpool, inducted Fr Michael Thompson VF, Parish Priest of St Richard’s, Skelmersdale, as the Parish Priest of Our Lady & All Saints, Parbold as well.