by Eleanor McDowell & Frank O’Hagan

The Emancipation Act of 1829 and the re-establishment of the Scottish hierarchy in 1878 ended centuries of civil and political persecution for Catholics. There was an urgent need for schools and qualified teachers to staff them. The Archbishop of Glasgow, Charles Eyre, approached the Sisters of Notre Dame and a training college was officially opened in Dowanhill, Glasgow in January 1895, with 21 female students.

With the rising demand for teachers in the 1960s, the college expanded. The former residential college relocated to a new site in Bearsden, although it operated from both sites for many years. When St Peters’ seminary moved from Bearsden to a new site near Cardross in 1966, the Archdiocese of Glasgow built new teacher training facilities on the Bearsden site. There were five halls of residence, each named after an individual who played a part in the development of Catholicism in Scotland.  Their life stories honour the contribution they made.

St John Ogilvie (1579-1615)

Ogilvie Hall was named after John Ogilvie, the first-born son of Sir Walter Ogilvie of Drum in Strathisla, Banffshire. Around 20 years before his birth, an Act of Parliament put an end to the Pope’s authority and Scotland was established as a Protestant country. In 1592, the young Calvinist was sent abroad to advance his education and he matriculated at the Protestant University of Helmstedt in Germany. While abroad, he became immersed in matters of intense religious debate, which eventually led to his Catholic conversion. By 1596, aged 17, he enrolled at the Scots College which had moved from Douai to Louvain. He was ordained in Paris in 1610.

The newly ordained Jesuit became a confessor to students in Rouen, where exiled priests gave grim accounts of persecuted Catholics in Scotland. Despite the danger, Ogilvie pleaded to be sent to the Scottish Mission. In November 1613, he returned to the land of his birth, disguised as a horse trader. With great earnestness he sought to serve the persecuted Catholic community.

His mission lasted less than a year. On 4 October 1614 an informer who contrived instruction in the Catholic faith betrayed him to the authorities. Following his arrest and captivity in Glasgow, Ogilvie endured interrogations, was offered bribes and suffered torture. On 10 March 1615, he was charged with high treason for refusing to recognise the spiritual jurisdiction of the King. He was found guilty and hanged at Mercat Cross, Glasgow.

Before long, accounts from eyewitnesses, fellow prisoners and Ogilvie’s testimony of his imprisonment and trial were printed and covertly circulated. He was beatified on 22 December 1929. Many years later, prayers of intercession for John Fagan, a parishioner with terminal cancer, were said in Blessed John Ogilvie Church in Easterhouse. John Fagan received the Last Rites in January 1967. By March, despite descending into a moribund state, he experienced an inexplicable cure. After nine years of intensive medical scrutiny, no medical explanation could account for the ‘Glasgow miracle’ which paved the way for Scotland’s first post reformation saint. Blessed John Ogilvie was canonised by Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1976. John Fagan outlived his wife, his parish priest, local doctor, and Pope Paul VI.

St Julie Billiart (1751-1816)

Billiart Hall was named after Marie Rose Julie Billiart, the foundress and first Superior General of the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. She was born on 12 July 1751 in Cuvilly in Picardy, Northern France., one of seven children to Jean-François Billiart and Marie-Louise-Antoinette. Her father earned a modest living as a farmer and shopkeeper. From a young age Julie’s personal piety and spiritual formation were profound. At seven, she memorised the catechism and taught local children the basics of the Catholic faith. She received her first Holy Communion and Confirmation aged nine and at fourteen, she made a vow of perpetual chastity. In 1774 she witnessed a traumatic firearms incident in her father’s shop, which led to a complex onslaught of paralysis and aphasia. Her intense physical suffering coexisted with a deep and mystical bond for the love of Christ.

The Billiart family lived during a time of political and religious turmoil, and the horror of the French Revolution. Julie’s outspoken criticism of anti-clericalism endangered her life. She was forced to flee from Cuvilly, hidden in a hay cart, first to Compiègne (where Carmelite nuns and lay associates were executed) and then to Amiens under the guardianship of her friend, the Countess Baudoin. At Amiens, Julie met Françoise Blin de Bourdon, a French aristocrat who narrowly escaped death by guillotine following the death of Robespierre. Bourdon had a deep faith and a desire for a religious vocation. Billiart and Bourdon began to develop catechetical classes. Although there was support from Amiens clergy, particularly the Jesuit priest, Joseph Varin (1769-1850) other episcopal representatives called for strict regulation, and even enclosure, of celibate women’s sororities. Nevertheless, the provision of education for disadvantaged girls became an integral aspect of Billiart and Bourdon’s vocational charism. On 2 February 1804, together with Catherine Duchâtel, they committed themselves to God with vows of poverty, chastity and obedience . Their new order would be called the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

The Sisters aimed to devote their care to the poor. In Amiens, the bishop challenged their request to extend their vocation outwith the city, and they were expelled. In 1809 their motherhouse was relocated to Namur in French-controlled Belgium. Billiart advised her sisters that a simple soul is content with everything and leaves all in the hands of God. Over time, the Sisters would establish their congregation across 16 countries in five continents. Julie Billiart, the ‘smiling saint’ known for her great courage and charity, died on 8 April 1816. She was beatified on 13 May 1906 and canonised on 22 June 1969.

Archbishop Charles Petre Eyre (1817-1902)

Eyre Hall was named after Charles Petre Eyre, who was born in Askham, Bryan Hall, Yorkshire, on 7 November 1817. He was the fifth of nine children of John Lewis Eyre (1789-1880) and Sara Parker (1790/1-1825). The historic Eyre family had been residents of Derbyshire since the thirteen century. During the English Reformation, being recusant Catholics, much of their land was confiscated. Four of five sons and one grandson of John Lewis Eyre were ordained priests.

In 1869 Eyre was appointed apostolic delegate to Scotland. Following the restoration of the hierarchy on 4 March 1878, he became the first post-Reformation Archbishop of Glasgow. The task was formidable. As Bernard Aspinwall wrote, it required ‘an authoritative harmoniser and healer; a resilient, decisive and dynamic builder of Catholic resources, to channel the various resentments into a united, disciplined effort’. Eyre laid the foundations for a disciplined Catholic community. Under Eyre’s direction, Glasgow had its own seminary, following the establishment of St Peter’s in 1874. Churches were built at an astonishing rate and additional clergy were brought in.

There was was an urgent need for schools and teachers. Eyre invited the Sisters of Notre Dame from Mount Pleasant Training College in Liverpool to establish a Catholic training college in Scotland. Extensive negotiations were finalised in June 1893, when the sisters selected Dowanhill as the new location. The site was close to the University of Glasgow, with excellent transport links and good schools for teaching practice. Their pioneering work was significant in advancing young women’s employment in a respected profession.

In 1892 Archbishop Eyre was the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) from the University of Glasgow. He died at his home in Glasgow on 27 March 1902 aged 84. His funeral procession drew an immense crowd and he is laid to rest at St Andrew’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Glasgow.

 Mary Adela Lescher (Sister Mary of St Wilfrid) 1846-1926

Lescher Hall was named after the first Principal of Notre Dame Training College. Mary Adela Lescher was born in Hampstead in 1846. She was the second of five children of Joseph Sidney Lescher (1803-1893) and Sarah Harwood (1812 -1856). Adele’s father was a partner in a wholesale chemist business. Sarah was raised in the Baptist tradition and converted to Catholicism two years after her marriage to Joseph.

They were a profoundly Catholic family. Adele’s brother Wilfrid was ordained a Dominican priest in 1864 and Adele entered the mother house of Notre Dame at Namur in Belgium in 1869. Sister Mary of St Wilfrid, as she was known, returned to England in September 1871 to teach at the Notre Dame boarding school in Clapham, London. Following a period of rheumatic fever, she convalesced at Mount Pleasant, a college for female teachers in Liverpool, established in 1856. Sister Wilfrid was later appointed to lecture in Botany, English, and Music. Two of her older cousins also entered religious life: Sister Frances Lescher (Sister Mary of St Philip, 1825-1904), principal of Notre Dame Teacher Training College at Mount Pleasant and Ann Lescher (Sister Mary of St Michael) a sister in the Institute of Notre Dame.

In 1886 Sister Mary of St Wilfrid oversaw boarders, instructed senior girls, and taught psychology. Six years later, she was appointed superior of Everton Valley Convent, Liverpool, which ran a day school, elementary schools, and a pupil-teacher centre.

In April 1893 Archbishop Eyre invited the Sisters of Notre Dame to establish the first Roman Catholic teacher training college in Scotland. On Monday 20 August 1894, Sister Mary of St. Wilfrid arrived with her ‘little community’ of four sisters. By January 1895 the college opened with twenty-one pioneer students, five of whom entered religious life as Sisters of Notre Dame. Sister Mary of St Wilfrid served as principal from 1893 until her retirement in 1919. An important achievement of Notre Dame College was the development of practical science, the revolutionising of biology teaching and a pioneering Montessori school. Under her guidance, an association for former Notre Dame students at Glasgow University and a Catholic Women’s Association were established. The Scottish Needlework Guild was another of her ventures, making garments for the poor and vestments for missions. After her short stay in a nursing home, the Association of Catholic Nurses of the Sick was founded.

Sister Mary of St Wilfrid died at Notre Dame Convent, Dowanhill, on 7 May 1926. She was laid to rest at Dalbeth cemetery.

Sister Mary Consuela SND (1904-1976

Sister Mary Consuela (Mary Rooney) was born in Kilmarnock in 1904. She went to Notre Dame Training College in Dowanhill and taught for a short time. In October 1929 she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame in Ashdown Park, Sussex. After her first profession in 1932 she joined the convent in Dowanhill, where she was called Sister Mary of Good Counsel but was later known as Sister Mary Consuela. In 1935 she received a First Class Honours degree and, following a period of teaching, was appointed principal of Notre Dame Training College in Dowanhill. She held this post from 1945 until 1965.

During her twenty years as Principal there was a creative drive for innovation in pedagogy and methodology. The post war years brought significant challenges with substantial changes in educational methods and regulations. Sister Consuela participated in the discussions which culminated in the decision to move Notre Dame College to Bearsden. She was involved in the planning and building of the new College, despite having resigned from her post before the move transpired. In 1965 she was appointed Provincial Superior of the Dowanhill Community. A year later she was appointed Provincial Superior of the British Province and moved to Ashdown Park in Sussex. In 1967 she received the ‘Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice’. The award, a decoration of the Holy See, was conferred for her distinguished service to the Catholic Church. In 1972, having completed her term of office, she was appointed Superior of the Southwark community in London where the Sisters of Notre Dame taught in the High School and primary schools in the vicinity. Sister Mary Consuela served for three years as the Superior in Southwark and returned to Scotland. A year later, on 4 December 1976, she died in Dumbarton.

Dr Frank O’Hagan was a Lecturer in History in the School of Education within the College of Social Sciences in the University of Glasgow and now writes, records, and produces music.

Dr Eleanor McDowell has an academic background in Environmental Sociology/Social Sciences. She is also interested in Scottish religious history, in particular, the life of Saint John Ogilvie.

Image: St Jullie Billiart by an unknown artist.

References

Aspinwall, B. (1997) Anyone for Glasgow? The Strange Nomination of the Rt. Rev. Charles Eyre in 1n 1868, Cambridge University Press.

Davis, Robert. A. and O’Hagan, Francis, J.  in Teaching Charisms in the Catholic Church Influence, Impact and Opportunity’, edited by Roisín Coll and Christine Robinson, forthcoming  publication 2025.

Forbes, Frances, A. and Cahill, M. (1900) A Scottish Knight-Errant, London Burns Gates & Washbourne

Gillies, D. A Pioneer of Catholic Teacher Training in Scotland: Sister Mary of St Wilfrid. Studies from the Notre Dame Archives (British Province) 1978, Vol 1(1) pp1-115.

Hanlon, L. G. (1937) Charles, Eyre, Archbishop of Glasgow,  in ‘The Venerable’, conducted by the past and present students of the Venerable English College Rome. Oct. 1937 Vol VIII. No. 3 England Catholic Records Press, Exeter.

McDowell, Eleanor (2014) John Ogilvie, a Jesuit in Disguise, CTS Publications.

Sisters of Notre Dame (SND), (1859). Règles et Constitutions des Soeurs de Notre-dame, Namur. University of Glasgow, Notre Dame Archives.