Stapehill in Dorset before the Cistercians

The Cistercian nuns of Holy Cross Abbey at Stapehill near Wimborne in Dorset have recently moved and settled in South Wales after more than 180 years in the house given to them in the nineteenth century by Lord Arundell of Wardour, so now is perhaps a suitable time for investigating the story of the place when it was a Jesuit centre for at least 135 years. One of the stations in the ‘College of St. Thomas of Canterbury’ or Hampshire district (which included Hampshire, Wiltshire and Sussex as well as Dorset), others in that part of the district being Lulworth, Wardour, Great Canford, Marnhull, Bonham and Odstock, it was sufficiently isolated and remote for a school to have existed there safely for some years.