The SHCJ European Province Archives hold the historic records generated and collected by the European Province of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus from the Society’s 1846 foundation in Derby, England to the present day.
The archives are made up of two sections: the Generalate Archive once kept at the SHCJ Motherhouse in Rome and the European Province Archive previously kept at SHCJ Convents in London and at Mayfield, East Sussex where the Provincial Superior and Province offices were once based. Alongside the European Province Archives, there are two others belonging to the SHCJ: the African Province Archives based in Jos, Nigeria and the American Province Archives based in Pennsylvania, USA.
Archival records have been kept by the sisters since the late 19th Century when the letters, manuscripts and objects made and used by the SHCJ’s foundress, Cornelia Connelly, were gathered together. The SHCJ also had a keen instinct for creating records which would become a key part of the archive. To ensure sisters’ memories were set down, the annals were written up by Mother Mary Theophila Laprimaudaye in the late 1880s. In 1904, a General Chapter decided that each SHCJ convent should appoint a diarist who would be responsible for recording events to be written up in her community’s annals. After Cornelia’s death in 1879, Mother Maria Joseph Buckle wrote to the SHCJ sisters who knew Cornelia well and requested letters containing all they could remember of the woman who had led their Society for 33 years.
Left: Mother Mary Theophila Laprimaudaye
At the General Chapter of the SHCJ in 1952, it was decided that steps should be taken to begin the process of the Cause for Cornelia Connelly’s beatification. To prepare evidence to support Cornelia’s Cause, both the SHCJ’s archives and other archives, which held material relevant to Cornelia’s life, were thoroughly researched.
Right: Sisters working on the Cause Papers at Mayfield
SHCJ sisters methodically arranged material and typed transcripts. Some current sisters still remember being involved in this enormous task while they were novices at the SHCJ’s Mayfield convent. The sisters’ diligent work contributed to the Cause’s positive progress as Cornelia was eventually declared Venerable by Pope John Paul II in 1992.
In 2004, the Generalate and Province archives were brought together to form the European Province Archives in the SHCJ’s Provincial Offices based at the Cherwell Centre in Oxford. The archives were kept in Oxford for a further 19 years. In 2023 they are to be transferred to Apley Grange, the SHCJ’s convent in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Left: the Cherwell Centre, where the SHCJ archives were housed in Oxford.