Theodore House, Stonyhurst

We are delighted to partner with the Christian Heritage Centre to host CEPHAS, since 2021, at Theodore House, Stonyhurst.

 

Theodore House is a perfect and idyllic setting for an intellectual retreat of this kind, with a beautiful chapel, seminar rooms, a library, modern rooms and catering, and plenty of social space inside and in the gardens and grounds. 

 

 

For more information about the venue Theodore House, please click here.

 

 

For more information about the Christian Heritage Centre, please click here.

 

CEPHAS: From Stone Convent to Stonyhurst

From its first course in 2012 until 2019, Cephas was held at St Dominic’s Convent, Stone, the then home of the Dominican Sisters of the English Congregation of St Catherine of Siena.

The convent was founded by mother Margaret Hallahan who assembled together the first ever community of active Dominican sisters in England in 1845.

The convent had close connections with major catholic figures of the nineteenth century. Blessed Cardinal Henry Newman, a close friend of some of the sisters of the congregation, preached the inaugural sermon in the convent church.

Augustus Pugin designed the smaller chapel of the convent which had previously been used by Blessed Dominic Barbari as a church and a school. Edward Elgar’s sister was a member of the Dominican community.

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We are deeply grateful to the Prioress and community of St Dominic’s Convent in Stone, Staffordshire, for supporting and hosting CEPHAS in its early years, as well as to the Christian Heritage Centre in Stonyhurst for adopting us, once St Dominic’s Convent closed.