The Lisbon Room at Ushaw

Author:

Michael Sharratt

Report:

28

Page:

2001

Year:

2001

Subject Matter:

Religion and Religious Institutions

Excerpt:

The English College in Lisbon trained priests for service in England and Wales for almost three hundred and fifty years. Its first students came from the English College at Douai in 1628. The daughter College kept fond memories of its origins and found it perfectly natural to appeal to this connection when asking for help' with staffing in the middle of the eighteenth cntury. Douai College was forced to close in 1793 in the aftermath of the French revolution, but Lisbon College survived the disruption of the Peninsular war to resume its work of training priests and to establish connections with the seminaries newly founded in England. There eventually came a stage when it was increasingly difficult to find qualified staff to provide the formation envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and in 1971 the Bishops of England and Wales took the difficult decision to disperse the College's students to other seminaries. It was necessary to find a room that would house the archives of the college and this was found at Ushaw College in Durham.

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