Our Congregation, the Dominican Sisters of the English Congregation of St Catherine of Siena, Stone, sprang from the amalgamation of five groups of Dominican Sisters whose beginnings in Britain occurred in the 19th century. The earliest of these was that started by Margaret Hallahan.

She was an orphan at the age of 9, and went into service with a family who then settled in Bruges, where Margaret, for the first time, met the full richness of Catholic practice. She became convinced that she should be a Dominican and determined to bring back the full practice of the faith to England, and in 1845 she was able to gather together the first ever group of active Dominican Sister in this country (Dominican women before the Reformation were enclosed nuns).

From the first, the Sisters recited the Divine Office together and took on a variety of works among the poor. By 1877 five Convents (including the one in Stone, Staffordshire) had been founded and the Constitutions were accepted by the Order and the Holy See.

Similar groupings of Dominican women were instituted in Stroud, Gloucestershire in 1857 by Mary Teresa Matthews, and in Leicester in 1875 by Rose Corbett.

Two other Congregations had their origins abroad: that which moved to Harrow at the invitation of Cardinal Manning in 1880 under the governance of Catherine Bathurst, had originated in Flanders in 1877; and the foundation in Portobello Rd. London, which was made from Chatillon, France, was established in 1896 at the invitation of Cardinal Vaughan, and was governed by Cecilia Marshall. All these founded houses in various parts of Britain.  

In 1929 the five Congregations, at the instigation of Fr Bede Jarrett O.P., the then Prior Provincial of the Dominican friars in England, were amalgamated into one English Dominican Congregation of St Catherine of Siena. St Dominic’s Convent, Stone, was chosen as the Mother House of the new Congregation, consequently, the congregation is familiarly known as “the Stone Dominicans.”

All the founding congregations, particularly the first, Mother Margaret’s, had been closely associated with the 19th-century Revival of the Catholic Church in England.  Mother Margaret was a friend of John Henry later Cardinal, Newman and a number of the first sisters of her Congregation were associated with Newman and the Oxford Movement. The convent at Stone, among other treasures, owns glass processional lamps that were a gift from Cardinal Newman; and a baton that belonged to the composer Sir Edward Elgar, whose sister joined the Stroud congregation.

We hope that this history will continue into the 21st century as we pray and work together for the revival of the Church in England in our time.