Angel of Deliverance – Aunt Monica
Aunt Monica brought deliverance once she knew of my injury and circumstances. She was my mother’s young sister, who had entered a religious community in 1936, becoming a nun in the order of St Vincent de Paul. In those days this order of nuns wore a distinctive habit of a blue color and topped with a very elaborate white starched headpiece. I was very fond of aunt Monica and she of me, always giving me the most desirable and expensive Christmas presents and other gifts before she became a nun and took a vow poverty. She was in fact very maternal, and had she married she would have made a perfect wife and mother. She invited me to stay and convalesce at her convent in Sheffield.
Aunt Monica – Sister of Charity Magdalen. 1897-1966
Convalescence
It was an ideal and providential solution to my need for care and of healing; my spirits rose and I went very happily. She and the other nuns especially the cook, a Sister Anne, made a great fuss of me cooking wonderful meals from which I put on weight. My lovely room had view out to the Yorkshire Pennines that brought back happy memories of Lower Greenbank Farm, Over Wyresdale and the Trough of Bowland.
The convent offered respectable accommodation for single business ladies as in those days little decent accommodation for single working ladies was available, meals and use of a common room. As might be anticipated rules governed your stay with strict discipline. Guests were expected to be by in 10:30pm, with no male visitors in their rooms and to adhere to a code of ladylike conduct.
Here with the attentions of the nuns, the ability to exercise in the beautiful convent grounds and in pleasant leaved suburban streets my knee improved as did my walking. Besides the physical healing, my spirit was restored. The companionship of the other ladies, and the quiet order and dignity of the convent that was all so very different to what I had been enduring at home, restored my peace and my sense of hope for my future. Overall, I had a good convalescence. I am as grateful to aunt Monica for this opportunity as I was to uncle John for all his help, as without this convalescence in the convent, I do not know what would have become of me. I can only regard it as my salvation.
My family owned Holt Hall Farm from the 1920s to the 1960s and I believe that Billy may be my father. It is very to read about from another perspective.
Very interesting read, especially about Holt Hall farm.