The national Heritage Open Days festival is always a highlight in our Michaelmas term, and this year was no exception! On Sunday 20 September we were pleased to welcome visitors to the College for guided tours of the original St Mary’s Priory buildings. This year’s Heritage Open Days theme was ‘Everyday Histories’, and there were plenty of these to explore from the records held in our archives. 

The tours introduced visitors to the lesser-known stories of the staff who helped to keep everything running smoothly at the Priory and its boarding school during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focussing in particular on the experiences of dressmaker Emma Cooke and factotum (AKA one-man Estates team) William Phillips. Tracing Emma and William’s footsteps through the places where they lived, worked and worshipped, visitors were able to explore areas including the original school buildings, the Cloisters and the Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels, and even ventured down to the cellars for an insight into the ‘below stairs’ working areas of the Priory. 

A display was also available for visitors to browse before and after their tours, detailing some of the everyday histories relating to the St Mary’s Priory buildings – from an 1830s hand-moulded brick marked with a tally number by the brickmaker, to a 1950 poem about the installation of electricity at the Priory! 

It was our pleasure to share our wonderful heritage with all our visitors, including Councillor Dale Keeling, Chairman of Warwickshire County Council, and his civic team, from whom we received a lovely letter of thanks after their tour. 

For more information on the everyday histories of St Mary’s Priory, see our blog about Emma Cooke on the Heritage Open Days website: https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/resource/the-dressmaker-ever-busy-with-her-needle.html, and the article on William Phillips also in Princethorpe Connect News.