Report - College of the Holy Child Jesus, Hastings - November 2011

Oxygen Thief · Dec 12, 2011

Explored with Riddlers + 1, and Monk.

Thwarted at first by badly parked vans making us work a bit harder than we expected (Thanks to OliverGT for the notes BTW, but we ended up getting in at the other end of the site).

This building is situated on the western boundary of a large convent site, originally purchased in 1834 by the Rev. Jones with a bequest of ?10,000 from Lady Stanley of Puddington. In 1848 nuns of the newly formed Catholic teaching order, "The Society of the Holy Child Jesus" moved into the convent. The architect William Wilkinson Wardell was employed to complete the convent building and design a Girls Poor School and entrance in the boundary walls, which had been erected in the middle of the 1830s. The foundation of the Girls Poor School was laid in 1849 and the entrance arch built in 1850. The Girls Poor School is now known as The Gatehouse. Wardell also built a presbytery on the site in 1856 and at about the same time the founder of the order, Cornelia Connelly, received permission from the Catholic church hierarchy to build a training college, which was built to the south of the girls Poor School. The entire building is shown on the 1873 Ordnance Survey map but it is likely that the northern part could have been built originally as part of the school, circa 1849, and the southern part was built as the training college circa 1856 as there is a change in character. The northern part has ogee-headed double lancet windows and the southern part trefoil-headed windows and there is a change in level at the junction of the two sections. The Training College closed in 1862 and he building became the Middle School. In 1883 the Middle School was re-located to Mayfield and the Junior School moved into the building. At this time a tunnel was built connecting the building to the main convent building. In 1914 it is thought that the northern part of the building was heightened by a storey. In 1974 "The Society of the Holy Child Jesus" moved the whole school to Mayfield and in 1976 the site was bought for use as a summer language school, in which use it has remained up to the present day

The college appears to be still open for residential language courses in June and July each year... http://www.holychild.co.uk/UK/hastings/cursos/localizacion.htm

A typical dormitory, it seemed like there was hundreds of these rooms...

Stained glass...

The following pictures are from two rooms that make up the dining rooms and serving area. This was once the original chapel. If you take a close look at the dark 12-panel windows you can see the original stained glass.

While we were in here, a vehicle pulled up, there was voices and a large dog barking. Damn it I thought. It was just a woman walking her dog, we were lucky.

A room near the kitchens...