Convent, Burbo Bank Road, Great Crosby

[ShaunJ]

Have you seen the transcribed VAD records for this lady on FindMyPast? She's described variously as a driver/chauffeur/chauffeuse.

[RosieThomas]

Thanks Sean .. yes I have the record. Description in family letter says: “Throughout the war she drove an ambulance right up to the trenches in all weathers and during the worst of the fighting, was gassed and contracted a bronchial condition from which she was never thereafter free."

She spent time in a nursing home in Sussex. That’s why I wondered if the convent might have had some sort of nursing function.

[ShaunJ]

I grew up in that area and I remember Ursuline only as a school.  My 1966 Kelly's Liverpool directory has a list of nursing homes (including Park House in Crosby which was run by Augustinian nuns) but Ursuline is not listed there. In the street directory only the school is mentioned.

[RosieThomas]

Oddly very little mention of it anywhere.

[stanmapstone]

From the Liverpool Echo 27 August 1981
Arson at Former Convent
Detectives are to-day hunting fire raisers who broke into a large former convent in Blundellsands, and started a blaze in the ground floor room once used as a chapel.
The large three-storey former Ursuline Convent in Burbo Bank Road which is up for sale, was broken into last night and a passing police patrol spotted the fire.


On the 1937 map it is a house called Seathwaite. In 1942 it was occupied by John B. Crispin, a director of Tate & Lyle who died there on the 19 February.
The Liverpool Daily Post 20 June 1942 has an article saying that Seathwaite had been sold to the Ursuline Sisters who it was expected would use the house as an extension to their school.

Stan

[ShaunJ]

The 1967 phone book has the address of the convent as "Overdale, Seathwaite, Burbo Bank Road".

[stanmapstone]

Overdale was the house next to Seathwaite, and was the Ursuline Preparatory School

Stan

[RosieThomas]

Thanks Sean and Stan. All helpful info. Did newspaper & census searches earlier but no info that takes me further forward.

[lancaster.jim]

Have you asked the Ursuline Order about the Ursine Convent, Burbo Bank Road, Gt Crosby?  There may be some surviving records that might help explain how this lady became resident there.  In view of her WWI VAD service there may have been an obituary written about her.

The Ursuline order has web-site -

http://www.ursulines.co.uk/index.htm

and this gives contact details -

Ursulines Roman Union
38 Grosvenor Road
Forest Gate
London
E7 8JA
United Kingdom

020 8471 6644

unamabel@aol.com

If you write, you should address your message to “The Archivist” and explain your interest in this lady.