The Dominican friars reached Leicester around 1247. At that time the Augustinian canons at Leicester Abbey (of Our Lady of the Meadows) cared for all the parishes within the walls of medieval Leicester. Through a highly unusual arrangement, the canons gave the friars the church of St Clement, a poor…Read More
The first Dominicans to return to Leicester after the Reformation came from Holy Cross Priory, Bornhem, founded in 1657 in what was then the Spanish Netherlands. The founder was Philip Thomas Howard, born in 1629, a member of the family of the Dukes of Norfolk, whose title had been in…Read More
At Bornhem, a school for English Catholic boys and a novitiate and study house of the Order (a foundation was also made at Louvain) thrived until the arrival of the French Revolutionary army in 1794. The brethren and the Dominican nuns of Brussels, also founded by Howard, escaped to England.…Read More
Holy Cross was established as a priory in 1882. During this period the brethren opened Mass centres around the city; thus all the parishes in Leicester arose from Dominican foundations. By 1929 the first Holy Cross church proved to be too small for the congregation. So the famous preacher and…Read More
Today the Priory of the Holy Cross is home to a large parish in the city centre, and serve a Mass station at the village of Woodhouse in a 14th-century chapel. We are responsible for the chaplaincies to two universities, the University of Leicester and De Montfort University, and provide…Read More