CovSoc member John Marshall uncovers the story of a 19th century convent at Stoke
Old maps of Gosford Green show a curious building on Walsgrave Road, often marked simply as a “Convent”. This was St Joseph’s Convent, a day and boarding school for girls, founded in 1862 by the Sisters of Mercy who, it is said, had been asked by the Fathers at St Osburg’s to provide schooling for girls who worked in the silk mills of Coventry.
At the outbreak of World War Two, the pupils and nuns were evacuated to Stoneleigh Abbey, at the invitation of Lord and Lady Leigh. It was a wise move because the school buildings at Gosford Green sustained extensive damage during multiple air raids and the entire structure was destroyed in April 1941.
This prompted the school to purchase Offchurch House, in Leamington Spa, as a new base for the convent, led by Mother Magdalen Pennington. Junior school pupils remained at Stoneleigh for the rest of the war, and in December 1941 senior school pupils moved to the new premises in Leamington.
In 1944, Mother Magdalen was offered the opportunity to purchase Crackley Hall in Kenilworth, together with 40 acres of land, from industrialist John Siddeley. By the early 1990s, the Sisters of Mercy had transferred the school to a lay association and in 2001 St Joseph’s merged with Princethorpe College. It became co-educational in 2010 and is now part of the Princethorpe Foundation. Crackley Hall today is an independent day school with around 240 pupils. (Information from Crackley Hall School).
This article is based on information from Crackley Hall School. The article first appeared in the August 2022 edition of the Stoke Local History Group Newsletter.