Convent Girls

Running a B & B is an interesting and rewarding way of life. You welcome strangers into your home and the majority leave as friends that you look forward to seeing again. For the last few years during the first weekend of July we have been welcoming to our B & B a very jolly group of ladies affectionly refered to as the ’Convent Girls’. This is the weekend when Pantasaph Friary and Retreat hold their summer fair, and visitors arrive to spend a few hours looking around the hallowed grounds and enjoying the beautiful surroundings, spending their pennies on cake stalls and tombola’s. It is a happy and reflective time for many. The Friary is a beautiful peaceful place where you can go on retreat to get away from the rigors of modern day life. It is run by just a few Franciscan Monks these days.

Opposite the Friary there used to be St Clare’s Convent. For those of you who know Pantasaph you will have seen the conversion of the old Convent into luxury housing and apartments. It was closed in the 1970’s and for many years the old buildings were an eye sore, as you looked at it from the A55, but now it has been beautifully restored and converted.

The ‘Convent Girls’ now only number a handful as they are all in their 70’s and as time goes by their numbers diminish but not their memories. The ‘Convent Girls’ spent all or part of their childhoods at St Clare’s Convent during the second war and post war period. Some were evacuated, some were orphans and some were from families who had fallen on hard times and couldn’t or wouldn’t look after them.

Last year we accompanied two of our guests June and Margaret on an emotional walking tour of the old convent and they painted a picture, as we walked around the converted buildings, of their life there. Their stores were at times very funny, extremely interesting, but mostly harrowing and incredibly sad. They weren’t treated well and had to work hard in harsh surroundings, often hungry and cold. What they did have was each other and their annual pilgrimage back to Pantasaph is a chance for them to see their ‘family’ and revisit their childhood.

Living history is so rewarding and this year we have been lucky enough to listen to more stories about their lives. What is so incredible it that all the ladies we have meet who were ‘Convent Girls’ are really lovely, happy, well rounded human beings who having left the Convent went on to self educate and have full and rewarding lives. Most have married and have families of their own to be proud of. Cruelty and hardship didn’t turn any of these lovely ladies into embittered degenerates or set them on a path to crime. Yes they all have regrets, issues to deal with and a past that for some have questions that will never be answered. But they are not victims and are proud to have risen above their cruel start in life; they are a real credit to their generation. They spend most of the weekend laughing and really enjoying themselves.

Nobody should endure what these lovely ladies went through during their childhood but today’s generations could learn a lot from them.