Community
Information about the Maryvale community.
Information about the Maryvale community.
After his reception into the Catholic Church, St John Henry Newman moved from Littlemore near Oxford to live at Oscott House to which he gave the name Maryvale; as a seminary the house had previously been placed under the patronage of Our Lady as ‘St Mary’s College, Oscott’. He was especially concerned about the need for lay people to receive a sound and full education in the Faith.
“ I want a laity… who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity. I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism ”.
Maryvale House is a place of pilgrimage and devotion as well as an educational centre, and the focus of that devotion is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The story of Maryvale’s link with the Sacred Heart begins with Bishop John Milner who became Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District in 1803. He had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart and when he enlarged the main chapel of the seminary/school, he built above the sacristy a small chapel in the Gothic style which became the first public shrine of the Sacred Heart in the British Isles
The site of Maryvale has been in Catholic occupation since the Middle Ages. Formerly 'Oscott House', it came to the Church in 1702 at the bequest of Father Andrew Bromwich who had inherited this property from his family. From 1794 to 1838 it was the home of Oscott College, the first Seminary to open in England after the Reformation