Dr Jan Graffius, curator of Collections and Historic Libraries, Stonyhurst College, will discuss the history and contents of two extraordinary 18th-century chapels in the North of England. Both chapels were hidden from view, but both reflected very different aspects of English Catholicism.

The 1713 Stonyhurst Shireburn inventory lists luxury artefacts from China and Asia along with those of the European baroque, salvaged medieval material culture and the latest English Georgian fashions, demonstrating a confident seigneurial Catholicism in a deeply rural setting. The flamboyant but hidden 1769 Bar Convent chapel of Mother Ann Aspinal and its associated 16th- and 17th-century relics and vestments speaks of a different community – religious sisters and recusant schoolgirls – navigating the political challenges associated with an all-female community in a volatile urban setting.

Lecture will begin at 2.30pm at York Medical Society. Further details about the venue can be found here: https://yorkmedsoc.org/

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0