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- Oct 19, 2015
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Shout out to @Vulex for letting me crash at his and helping me out with this one, great day out all round, if a ridiculously long drive, alone all the way from the south coast... 
Looking back through my backlog, I'd say this was one of my top explores to date. We managed to get away with a fair few hours in here, and being a gorgeous clear morning, spent a fair while chilling up in the observatory. Shame we were kicked out before we could see the whole building, but secco was pretty sound in all fairness and told us a bit about the building, which is currently under new ownership due to the old owner passing away not long before we visited Still hoping to return one day
The history -
St Joseph's College, Upholland is a former Roman Catholic seminary. The foundation of the large building was laid in April 1880 and college was opened in 1883. It was founded by Bishop Bernard O'Reilly to be the Seminary serving the North West of England.
Looking back through my backlog, I'd say this was one of my top explores to date. We managed to get away with a fair few hours in here, and being a gorgeous clear morning, spent a fair while chilling up in the observatory. Shame we were kicked out before we could see the whole building, but secco was pretty sound in all fairness and told us a bit about the building, which is currently under new ownership due to the old owner passing away not long before we visited Still hoping to return one day The history -
St Joseph's College, Upholland is a former Roman Catholic seminary. The foundation of the large building was laid in April 1880 and college was opened in 1883. It was founded by Bishop Bernard O'Reilly to be the Seminary serving the North West of England.
St. Joseph’s (usually referred to by its students simply as "Upholland") was one of two main seminaries serving the north of England. Upholland served the northwest, Ushaw College the northeast. For many years, each of these institutions housed both a junior (minor) and a senior (major) seminary. The junior seminaries provided a secondary education in a semi-monastic environment to boys aged 11–18 who wished to pursue the priesthood, while the senior seminaries trained adult candidates (mostly aged between 18 and 24) in philosophy and theology as they prepared for the priesthood. A detailed account of daily life in the junior seminary at Upholland during the 1960s was published in 2012. This account also explores the reasons why the Church's traditional form of seminary training may have predisposed certain priests to molest children, which was one of the key findings of a major investigation conducted on behalf of American bishops into the causes of the sexual abuse crisis within the US Catholic Church.
The election of Archbishop Patrick Kelly saw the controversial decision to close St Joseph's altogether and the property was sold to Anglo International who instructed AEW Architects for the conversion of the Grade 2 listed RC Seminary to 92 apartments, with 220 new build enabling units. The major controversies of the decision were the ongoing financial viability of St Joseph's (it had just started to make a small surplus under Devine's management) and the sale and disposal of the art and artefacts in the college, much of which had been donated by various parishes and people of the Archdiocese who were not offered their donations back.
Now for some photos (Little bit pic heavy, apologies in advance)
Cheers for looking
(Little bit pic heavy, apologies in advance)
Cheers for looking
