The Benedictine Nuns and Kylemore Abbey. Deirdre Raftery
Nun walking in the grounds of Benedictine Abbey of Ypres (n.d.).
Two nuns in corridor at Benedictine Abbey of Ypres (n.d.).
The Ypres convent developed a reputation for education and ran a successful boarding school. Most of the young girls sent to board there would have been the daughters of members of the English and Irish Catholic upper ranks, who were deprived of Catholic schooling at home. In part because of its series of Irish-born abbesses, Ypres became known as a convent that attracted Irish families. For example, there is some possibility that Nano Nagle, who would later found the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (PBVM), was sent from Cork to be educated in Ypres in the early eighteenth century.47 The Ypres community spoke and taught through English, making the school well suited to Irish families like the Nagles. The rate at which Irish girls were sent to Ypres slowed from the start of the nineteenth century, however. At that point, with the relaxation of relevant penal laws, convents were again being established in Ireland. Orders such as the Ursulines (OSU) and the Loretos (IBVM) were opening boarding schools for the daughters of the Catholic elite in Cork and Dublin. Loss of income as a result of the decrease in Irish pupils was felt in Ypres: in 1784, Lady Abbess Lynch wrote several times to Teresa Mulally in Dublin, asking Mulally to ‘procure an encrase in pensionners’ for the Ypres school.48
In 1840, Lady Abbess Byrne was succeeded by an English-born Dame, Lady Abbess Elizabeth Jarrett (1840–88), thus bringing to an end the era of Irish Abbesses at the Benedictine Abbey in Ypres.49 For a period under Dame Jarrett’s term as Abbess, there were no Irish-born Dames living in the community. In 1854, Dame Joseph Fletcher arrived in Ypres and ‘united the community again to “old Ireland”’.50 Lady Abbess Jarrett died in September 1888 and was succeeded by Dame Scholastica Bergé (1890–1916).51 Under Lady Abbess Bergé, a ‘stream of vocations … [began] to flow again’ and ‘the daughters of Erin [found] their way once more to the Convent of the Irish Dames, the only Benedictine convent which Irishwomen can call their own’.52 In the absence of any records from the Ypres monastery, it is impossible to say exactly who these Irishwomen were; however, it is reasonable to suggest that they were young women who had been educated by teaching sisters at some of the many hundred convent schools that spread across Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.53 With increasing vocations, a period of stability and growth followed.
Cellar plan, Benedictine Abbey of Ypres (n.d.).
All of this was shattered when, in July 1914, the First World War broke out.
Pupils dressed for pageant at the Benedictine Abbey of Ypres (n.d.). Overleaf: Benedictine Abbey of Ypres after the bombing in 1914.
From left to right: Sr Dorothy Ryan, Sr Noreen Gallagher, Sr Genevieve Harrington, Mother Máire Hickey, Sr Aidan Ryan, Sr Magdalena FitzGibbon, Sr Marie Genevieve Mukamana, Sr Karol O’Connell, Sr Mary Jiao
From left to right: Sr Noreen Gallagher, Sr Aidan Ryan, Sr Karol O’Connell, Sr Marie Genevieve Mukamana, Mother Máire Hickey, Sr Genevieve Harrington, Sr Magdalena FitzGibbon, Sr Dorothy Ryan, Sr Mary Jiao
‘… selfhood begins in the walking away
And love is proved in the letting go.’
Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72)
CHAPTER TWO
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS KYLEMORE,
1914–1920
The First Battle of Ypres
On 28 July 1914, one month to the day after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. A few days later, Germany declared war on Russia and Britain declared war on Germany. After advancing relatively quickly through Belgium and eastern France during the first weeks of the war, the Germans suffered defeat in September in the Battle of the Marne. In that month, all German nationals were expelled from Belgium.1 In the Benedictine Abbey in Ypres, four members of the community were German. They had to leave the country immediately, travelling first from Ypres to Bruges; the Bishop assisted their passage from there to Holland.2 The remaining fifteen nuns (fourteen professed and one novice) had expected that their German sisters would return within a few weeks but, on 7 October, a German aeroplane passed over the town and shortly afterwards, at about 1.30 p.m., everyone was startled by the sound of firing close by. Dame Columban Plomer wrote: ‘In the Monastery, it was the spiritual-reading hour, so we were not able to communicate our fears; but, instead of receding, the sound came nearer, till, at 2 o’clock, the shots from the guns literally made the house shake.’.3 The nuns did not know what was happening until ‘Reverend Mother Prioress announced … [that] the Germans were in the town.’.4
The strategy of both sides in the war after that was to secure the ports on the English Channel, beginning what became known as the ‘Race to the Sea’. German forces launched a major offensive that aimed to push forward to the Channel ports of Dunkirk and Calais. Ypres, located on the northeast corner of Belgium bordering France, was in an extremely important position strategically, as it was effectively the fortress blocking their route. To achieve their objectives, it was necessary for Germany to take Ypres; for the Entente it was essential to ensure that they failed. This resulted in the First Battle of Ypres, which lasted until late November, and was described as ‘the centre of the most terrible fighting in the War’.5
By the end of October, it had become apparent that the fighting was not going to end as soon as had at first been widely believed. The burgomaster sent round word that from henceforward until further orders, no strong lights should be visible from outside the monastery and no bells should be rung from six in the evening until the following day. Consequently, when night fell, the monastery remained in darkness, each nun contenting herself with the minimum of light. A few strokes