rchived ews

May MMVI

Dear Friends,

A number of projects should be coming to fruition in the course of this year. Earlier in the year the Mill Hill Fathers, a Missionary Institute founded by Cardinal Vaughan, decided to sell their premises, a huge house in Mill Hill, London. The Abbey has been offered a number of treasures from their house, including a sizeable part of their library and the historic altars which grace their chapel. It will be many months before any real discussions can begin about the altars. Our Abbey Church is a Grade One listed building and the addition of side altars, even in the crypt require building consents and permissions from English Heritage. The Abbey Community enjoys an excellent relationship with English Heritage built up during the recent restoration of our church.

News from the Catholic Library is that it will be open in September. The library has transformed the monastery basements. New heating and lighting, and lavatories have been installed. Humidity has been controlled and the vast quantity of books unpacked and shelved. It is a mammoth task, and is all down to the devotion and hard work of Mrs Joan Bond, the indefatigable librarian. She has put the whole thing back together in spite of having twice retired from the job. Please God, the library will be a lasting memorial to her hard work and in sacrificing space to house it here for at least three years, we will have done a good service to Catholic England.

Later in the Summer we will provide some photographs of work on the farm. We have felled some forty-nine Leylandii in our efforts to open up the inner part of the estate and make it more accessible to the tractor, and therefore more practical and manageable. We have made so much excellent progress in the last years that many guests who have not visited us in a long time are quite taken aback at the amount of change.

Yours sincerely in the Lord,

For further information or comments please contact info@farnboroughabbey.org