The Jubilee 400 Heritage Project was created by the Bar Convent Trustees to work alongside the York community of the Congregation of Jesus. During the three year period of their Jubilee 400 Celebrations the aim is to realise their ambition of creating a centre of living heritage in commemoration and celebration of their founder, Mary Ward, and the subsequent advancement in the education of Catholic women carried out by the sisters who followed in her footsteps.

The Jubilee 400 Heritage Project aims to raise funds to the value of £500,000 between September 2008 and January 2011 through sponsorship, donations and events, to enable the Bar Convent Trust, in collaboration with the Congregation of Jesus, to renovate and update the Bar Convent Museum and reposition it as a centre of living heritage. This will improve accessibility to its target audiences as well as enhancing its educational, spiritual and historical standing in the local community in accordance with its’ charitable status.

In this context the “Museum” includes the ground floor, upstairs gallery and corridor of the current Museum, the Great Parlour and Entrance Hall.

Visitors soon realise that the Museum and other parts of the building are home to a great many historic paintings, artefacts and relics related to the history of the Bar Convent. The Museum tells a fascinating story of how the order of nuns lived under constant mystery and secrecy in order to preserve their way of life and their lives in times of terrible persecution, as well as the lack of recognition of the value of education for girls and women, and the contribution they could make to society. The Trustees now wish to revitalise the Museum and undertake some conservation and redecoration in the area of the building in which the “Museum” is situated.

To restore and preserve the historical and architectural integrity of the building currently used as the “Museum” and to revitalise the educational role of the Bar Convent by creating a new vision for the building as a centre of living heritage will create a better understanding of:

• Recusant history
• The role of the Bar Convent in the social history of education in York
• The architectural significance and development of the Bar Convent, and the changing use of the complex over the centuries
• What Mary Ward and her congregation have achieved
• How women’s role has changed over the centuries
• And what being a Nun is really about, yesterday and today!

The Jubilee 400 Heritage Project Team is very excited about re positioning The Bar Convent Museum as a Heritage Site and if you would like further information either about the Heritage Project or the facilities available at the Bar Convent, please call us on 01904 643238 and ask for Jo Dodd, Business Manager or Gillian Louise Glew, Jubilee 400 Heritage Project Co-ordinator.