Archives & Special Collections (A&SC) cares for and makes available in perpetuity the unique and distinctive collections of the Liverpool Hope University (LHU), and aims to enable the widest possible use of its collections by students, staff, the wider scholarly community.
For those collections that are not yet catalogued, there are finding aids available to help identify material in the archives. If you identify a particular area of interest but are unsure what to do next, or you're having trouble finding what you're looking for, please email specialcollections@hope.ac.uk with the details. To view archival material it will be necessary to make an appointment, please refer to Access the Collections for further information.
S. Katharine’s College began in 1844 with the Anglican foundation of Warrington Training College, established in response to the need to provide suitably trained women teachers for the increasing school provision. The ‘training school’, later called ‘college’, was associated closely with St. Elphin’s School housed in adjoining buildings but by the 1880s an increasing independence had been established as the college expanded. This Warrington existence ended abruptly in December 1923 when a serious fire caused sufficient damage for the college buildings to be abandoned. Pictured to the left are the College staff in 1911 with Revd. Morley Stevenson, Principal 1882-1923.
Warrington Training College survived temporary relocation at Battersea, London, before the building and opening of the Liverpool site in 1930. The former name seemed increasingly inappropriate and the Warrington Chapel dedication of S. Katharine was chosen as the new name of the College in 1938. No sooner had the consolidation at Liverpool got underway when pre-war planning and air-raid precautions necessitated the evacuation of the College buildings on the day war was declared in 1939. The David Lewis Northern Hospital requisitioned the buildings in Childwall and the. The College was re-located to Keswick for the duration of the war only returning to Liverpool in 1947. Due to an increase in student numbers premises in Keswick were retained and additional buildings taken at Scarisbrick Hall near to Ormskirk, Lancashire.
The completion of additional new buildings and facilities in 1963 consolidated the College to the one site in Liverpool, and then federation with the Liverpool teacher training colleges of Notre Dame and Christ’s led rapidly to the formation of the Liverpool Institute of Higher Education in 1980.
The S. Katharine's College Archive catalogue is now available to download together with a list of S. Katharine's College slides.
The Mount Pleasant Training College Archive from the Notre Dame British Province was deposited with The Sheppard-Worlock Library in January 2015. The Notre Dame College in Mount Pleasant is one of Liverpool Hope’s Foundation Colleges. In 1980 the college relocated to Childwall to merge with Christ’s College, and federated with S. Katharine's College under the title of Liverpool Institute of Higher Education (LIHE).
The archive contains material dating from 1856 to 1980 including correspondence relating to the founding history, the Governing Body, and the Board of Education, Catholic Education Council reports, and information relating to Principals and some student records. A list of these items can be found on the Mount Pleasant Training College Archive catalogue, available to download. Please note, the amalgamation and federation papers and some property and finance records, are as yet unprocessed and uncatalogued.
Sadly, very few archival materials relating to Christ's College were retained during after the federation and the little held in the archives are uncatalogued. Please email the Special Collections Librarian, Karen Backhouse or specialcollections@hope.ac.uk for information.
An archive of material relating to the Vatican II Council, dating from 1929 to 1996, originally collected by a delegate and observer of the Vatican II Council, Rev Dr William G. Baker. The Baker Library Vatican II Archive list of contents is available to download.
Liverpool Hope has been fortunate enough to receive materials from the estate of Archbishop Stuart Blanch (1918-1994). These include notes from his student days at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and notes for sermons, lectures, talks and speeches made while Bishop of Liverpool (1966-1975) and Archbishop of York (1975-1983). There are also hand-written works on the Gospels and transcripts of various broadcasts and press articles. Lists of these papers can be found on the Archbishop Stuart Blanch Archive, available to download. Read more about Archbishop Stuart Blanch and the Annual Memorial Lecture that takes place here at Liverpool Hope University in association with the Diocese of Liverpool.
Josephine Butler
Catholic Truth Society Pamphlets (Talbot Library)
In 2017 Liverpool Hope Archives & Special Collections were fortunate to receive a significant collection of education research material donated by the Culham St. Gabriel's Trust. The collection belonged to Dr. Lois Louden, a prominent figure in Education and Church Schools in the North West.
Dr Lois Mary Robertson Louden (1938-2015) was an historian of education, education advisor, lecturer, author, guide, and general educationist who specialised in studying the relationship between the Church and Schools, with particular emphasis on the National Society and Methodism. Her academic studies and career spanned from 1956 to 2015. Louden was also an active member of the Lancaster Methodist Church and volunteered for many organisations, including the NHS Ambulance Services Trust. Louden was largely active in the Lancaster and Blackburn area, and took a special interest in the history and development of the schools and education authorities in that area. Read more biographical information about Dr Lois Louden in the Hope Special Collections blog.
The Lois Louden Collection consists of two halves, books and archival papers covering a wide variety of topics including the general history of education, schools, and the Methodist Church. There are specific texts concerning Church Schools, public education, missionary movements, education as a value to society, education and law, women in education, and biographies and autobiographies of individual educators. Among the rarest and possibly most valuable materials in the collection are the six School Government Chronicles, which date from as early as 1885 and were an index or ‘gazette’ of issues in education at the time of their publication. They contain announcements and short articles regarding changes to school programs and structures. Louden also owned a series of Wesley Historical Society North Lancashire Branch Bulletins containing a selection of prayers and society notes. Another valuable set of materials are Louden’s collection of The National Society Annual Reports. The Church of England National Society was established in 1811 to provide Education and Church Schools in every Parish, especially for poor children. The reports Louden collected run almost consistently, except for a few years, from 1920 to 1989 and contain a plethora of interesting and useful content regarding the National Society.
The second half of the collection contains over eight linear metres of archival material, catalogued as the Lois Louden Papers. Three categories are identified; research, work-related materials, and personal materials. A significant aspect of Louden’s personal papers is her research of education and church schools. This includes research organised by location and school, such as materials she collected relating to St Martin’s College, research organised by event, such as the 1902 Education Acts, and research organised by topic and type of school. Additionally, there are materials relating specifically to the Church of England and the National Society.
Lois Loudon’s interest and passion for education was as much personal as it was professional and the books and archival material she has left behind will be an invaluable resource for the contribution to future research in the history of education, specifically (but not limited to) Church Schools in the Lancaster and Blackburn areas, and the Methodist Church.
The books are fully catalogued and available to search on our Library Catalogue and the Dr Lois Louden Papers list of contents is available to download.
Rev Prof. Dr. Harold Keeling Moulton (1903-1982) was a missionary for the Methodist Missionary Society in South India from 1927. He taught for 5 years at Findley College, Trichinopoly, before becoming Professor of New Testament Studies at United Theological College, Bangalore. He worked on the revision of the Tamil New Testament and the development of liturgy for the Church of South India. In 1957 he returned to England and was a Translation Secretary at the British and Foreign Bible Society. There are 507 archival items, dating from 1939 to 1982, listed in the Rev H.K. Moulton Papers.
The Nugent Archive was deposited with Liverpool Hope in 2013 by the registered charity Nugent, formerly Nugent Care, the origins of which date back to the pioneering work of Father James Nugent (1822-1905) in relation to child welfare, relief from poverty and social reform. The institutional records relating to the children’s homes affiliated with the Archdiocese of Liverpool are held by Liverpool’s Central Library Archives, but it was felt that the personal correspondence and the more ephemeral items would be better placed at Liverpool Hope University, to support education in the history of child welfare in Liverpool.
Father Nugent was a passionate social reformer, appalled by the state of the homeless living in the squalor of Victorian England, and he dedicated his life to the education and rescue of destitute children. He was responsible for inviting the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur to Liverpool in 1851, to work in the orphanages and to take charge of several Catholic Poor Law Schools to provide the children with a basic standard of education. Later, the ladies’ boarding and middle school at Mount Pleasant became the Training College for Catholic school mistresses, founded by Sister Francis Mary Lescher. This became known as Mount Pleasant Training College and is a founding college of Liverpool Hope University.
Fr Nugent was an early pioneer of children’s emigration. In 1870 he took the first group of 24 children to Canada on 18 August 1870 on the SS Austrian; this was probably the first organised emigration of its kind. The Catholic Children’s Protection Society carried on the work, as quoted by Fr Nugent, ‘of rescuing orphan and abandoned children, and of placing them in comfortable homes in Canada, where they would have the opportunity of becoming useful and respectable members of the community.’ In 1881 they set up two homes in Canada to cater for children who wished to emigrate; these were the St. George's Home for Boys in Ottawa and the St. Vincent's Home for Girls in Montreal. Fr Nugent had a vision of happy, healthy children, prospering in a land of opportunity; others saw it as a scheme to rid the city of those who would otherwise become a burden on the rates.
A serious fall on deck during a return journey from New York in 1903, preceded a decline in health for Fr. Nugent and he died on 27th June 1905 in Formby. Ten thousand mourners gathered for his funeral procession to Ford Cemetery on the 30th of June and a life-sized bronze statue was erected by public subscription in St. John’s Gardens on December 8th 1906.
In 1924 the three separate organisations; the Liverpool Catholic Children’s Protection Society, the Catholic Children’s Aid Society and Father Berry’s Homes joined together as one under the guidance of the Archbishop of Liverpool, Frederick William Keating. He appointed Father John Oswald Bennett (1891-1965), as administrator, and he remained for over 40 years.
He was an important character in the development of social welfare, where his influence and expertise often extended beyond Liverpool. Fr Bennett was involved at national level serving as part of the Central Advisory and Training Council. At international level, he was directly involved in the development of child welfare in Malta, after an appeal by the Governess of Malta, Lady Laycock. He would also become the biographer of Monsignor James Nugent in 1949, when he wrote the book, Father Nugent of Liverpool.
The Nugent Archive falls into two halves:
Firstly, the letters of Father Nugent written during his time as Chaplain of Walton Gaol and as co-founder of the Liverpool Catholic Children’s Protection Society.
And secondly, and by far the largest part of the archive, the correspondence of Father Bennett covering subjects such as child welfare, juvenile delinquency, child psychology, and the end of child emigration to Canada in the 20th century.
The archive contains some 26 books and 272 items in total, including the addition of any academic research undertaken using the archive. The Nugent Archive list of contents is available to download.
There is a useful learning resource available to watch on YouTube on the founder of Nugent, Father James Nugent (1822-1905), and the Nugent Archive held at Liverpool Hope University. There is also a chronology of Fr Nugent's life available on the Nugent webpages.
In 1964, Patrick Johnstone was working with Dorothea Mission in South Africa. The mission had a passion for prayer and world evangelism. While attending a prayer conference in Kenya, Patrick was asked to compile information for intentional and strategic prayer at the conference. Patrick produced a 30-page booklet covering 40 countries. In 1970 he was challenged to rewrite it, but believed that any future edition would need to cover the world.
The first globally-focused edition, Operation World, was published in 1974, and a further edition published by Operation Mobilisation in 1978. The most recent is from 2010, which is a complete update of the 21st century edition, released in 2001. Operation World has been translated into several other languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, and in part into Italian. The cumulative number of copies printed in all languages exceeds 2 million.
The WEC International Research Collection is the culmination of 40 years of collected articles and ephemera that formed the backbone of the Operation World information in the pre-internet era. There are several thousand spiral bound volumes covering 45 metres of shelf space with articles pasted into pages, organized in different categories within each country, with four editions per country dating from the 1970s into the early 21st century. The categories include a general information survey, political-economic news and analysis, religion and Christian surveys and information, church and Christian ministry, particularly mission activity, and finally ethnolinguistic people group information. The majority, but certainly not the entirety, is from Global North sources. The content compiled from newspapers, magazines and journals, in-house publications and even missionary prayer letters, is not fully comprehensive.
Jason Mandryk, Director, Editor Operation World (6th-7th editions) and Patrick Johnstone, author Operation World 1st–6th editions, discuss the origin and development of Operation World and is widely regarded as ‘the definitive prayer guide to every nation’ and the recipient of the ECPA Gold Medallion Award for Excellence in Evangelical Christian Literature.
To view the microfiche/film collections please email specialcollections@hope.ac.uk to book an appointment.
The Church Missionary Society (CMS) archive includes letter books, mission books, original (incoming) papers and other records from their overseas missions during the 19th and 20th century. The mission papers are a rich source for Church and mission history. The papers include, for example, the detailed journals and annual letters which the society's missionaries were required to provide as an account of their activities. As the work of the missions embraced not just evangelism but also education, medical work, language study and translations, and development of local agriculture and industry, these detailed records are a valuable resource for study in a wide range of other research interests including anthropology, politics, slavery, geography and travel, and women's studies.
The overseas mission work of the CMS began in Sierra Leone in 1804 but spread rapidly to India, Canada, New Zealand and the area around the Mediterranean. Its main areas of work in Africa have been in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan. The contents of the CMS archive in Special Collections is mainly on West Africa. The list of microfilm contents of the Church Missionary Society Archive is available to download.
The Personal Papers of John Henry Newman consist of the diaries, letters and miscellaneous documents from the Newman archive held at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, in Birmingham, preserved on 137 reels of microfilm. The John Henry Newman Personal Papers catalogue is available to download.
Based at the junior seminary of St Joseph's College in Upholland, Lancashire, the Upholland Northern Institute (UNI) was set up to aid adult Christian education and the continuing development of clergy in the North West. Talks organised by UNI were recorded to cassette tapes and sold across the UK, both to priests and lay audiences, to provide material for study or group talks.
In 2013 the tapes were digitised and copies may be downloaded for free from the Archdiocese of Liverpool’s website. There are over 800 recordings of UNI lectures taped between 1975 and 1988. As a theological resource, these recordings cover a wide spread of topics ranging from scripture to social issues. Speakers include Vincent Nichols, Hugh Lavery, Dympna Magee and Raymond E. Brown. A PDF version of the Upholland UNITAPE catalogue is available to browse. The digital copies have also been downloaded onto CD format and are housed in Special Collections. They are available to borrow for students, staff and readers with a visitor's card.
The collection records the work of the Methodist Missionary Society (from the Methodist Union of 1932), and the work of the different missionary societies prior to 1932 (including the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Primitive Methodist Missionary Society and the missionary societies of the churches that formed the United Methodist Church).
The main series for the (Wesleyan) Methodist Missionary Society includes material from the home organisation in London, which directed overseas missionary affairs, including committee minutes and papers, candidates' papers (1829-1869) finance papers (1817-1945) Home (1803-1896) and outgoing correspondence (from 1816). However, the bulk of the material comprises Synod minutes and correspondence sent to London from the overseas districts including Europe, North America, West Indies [Caribbean and Americas], West Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, Kenya, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], Southern India, Northern India, Burma [Myanmar], China, and Australasia. There are over 17,000 microfiche in the archive. The list of Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Archive on microfiche is available to download.
To consult the archives please email Special Collections to make an appointment, or visit Finding aids to download the archive catalogue.