Hunston Convent: the last move

Hunston’s nuns: Records of their earthly deaths, 1872-1994

This is a record of the 36 nuns who died and were buried within their enclosure during the 120 years’ existence of the Chichester Carmel (aka Hunston Convent). The closure of their convent led to their being reinterred in 1994 in Portfield Cemetery, run by Chichester District Council. Amongst those buried in Portfield there is one Hunston nun who died elsewhere but was interred amongst her sisters in Chichester, and two secular members of staff and a priest, who were buried first in Hunston and then reinterred with rest of the community.

The civic authority’s record of the reinterment writes a new page in the community’s story. The Hunston Convent cemetery and its remains were in effect private and privy, whilst the Portfield cemetery and its records are in the public domain (though not hitherto digitized and made available to be published by a third party, I think).

Should RDN publish this material?
In November 2024 my project to publish the Portfield cemetery material received the endorsement of Sister Mary Care Trolley, who in the 1990s transferred to the Carmelite community in Terre Haute, Indiana on Hunston’s closure, and is one of the few living members of the Hunston community. Sister Mary Clare has been a monastic abbess and is senior in US Carmelite associations. She is one of the very few people whose permission in this matter I’d feel inclined to accept.

Why read the material?
Reading this material should not, I think, be taken to be mawkish, sentimental, sensationalist or gruesome. A monastic order or other sympathisers might indeed take it to be of interest because it is perhaps the only record for many of the women of their passage from enclosed devotion to heavenly glory.

Also, in a curious way, it is the record of the spiritual “output” of a sort of religious “factory”. In 120 years, a purpose-built convent kept the wolf from the bay with support from people beyond its walls, with some produce from its grounds. It dispensed kindness to the needy. And sent 37 nuns to their maker.

It may also be that this record serves both the memory of the Hunston community’s members and the interests of their families’ descendants or others.

Background to the table
This table is culled from burial records kindly sent to RDN by Chichester’s cemeteries department. It covers all the 36 sisters (nuns) who died and were buried at Hunston Convent (officially the Chichester Carmelite Convent) during its existence from its opening in 1872 to its closure in 1994. In that year, the remains of these Hunston nuns (and one other, who died elsewhere) were disinterred from Hunston and reinterred at Portfield Cemetery, Chichester.

(The Portfield records show that one sister, Mary Sankey, whose religious name was Mary Assumpta, died in “Brooklands N/H Bracklesham”, which I deduce perhaps to have been a National Health Hospital or a nursing home, and was buried in June 1994 directly at Portfield. Hence the figure of 37 nuns engraved on the communal gravestone in Portfield Cemetery.)

It seems worthwhile to publish the Portfield burial records because they give clues to the lives, religious and secular, of 37 women who devoted themselves to a particular spiritual discipline and hope. Included are the burial records of two of the convent’s secular staff, and of a priest, Fr Hippolytus Francis Gravey, who was with the Hunston community whilst it was still at Valognes in France, and came with them, and worked with them at their new English home.

RDN has been fairly diligent in culling the information in the attached PDF document, and hopes to be forgiven for any errors.

For the details of all the above: