Spanish Girls at the Bar Convent (York): Education and Identity in Perfidious Albion at the End of the Ancien Régime

Abstract

This article examines the presence of Spanish girls at the Bar Convent in York during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, regarded as the oldest surviving Catholic girls’ school in England and run by the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), founded by Mary Ward. Drawing on archival and unpublished sources, it analyses their trajectories in relation to the Catholic families who sent them, as well as their daily life and the education they received within the convent. Particular attention is given to the spiritual dimension of this experience, shaped by the Ignatian tradition and Ward’s legacy at a time of crisis for the Society of Jesus. The study recovers an episode that highlights the persistence of Catholicism in a hostile confessional environment and the active role of female institutions in its transmission.