Our Lady's Convent, Loughborough

Client: The Sisters of Providence, Rosminian Order

Role: Architecture, Landscape Architecture

Value: £2.65 million

Our Lady’s Convent provides a contemporary new convent with chapel and infirmary for providing care to the very frail Sisters of Providence, Rosminian Order.

The existing convent, chapel and school were located in a Grade II Listed Building which was built for the Rosminian Sisters in the 1840s and 1850s. It was decided that the adaptation of the existing convent was not a viable option and was therefore proposed that a new convent be built within the site to provide 23 bedrooms, six of which (the ‘infirmary’) will provide care for the most frail members of the order.

The design of the new convent and chapel aims to sensitively integrate the needs of the religious community, in terms of both their future care needs and also their particular daily needs, with the historic context of the site and residential scale of the street. The focus of the design concept is the setting of a new chapel which sits on axis with the existing historic chapel, and offers a progression of spaces from the street.

The new and old chapels are linked by the courtyard garden, which provides the main focus from the circulation routes through the convent and frames the old chapel within the historic gardens. Together the chapel and courtyard garden form the two most important spaces in the convent, representing worship, prayer and contemplation. In addition two spaces are created on the north side of the site, with the Parlour Garden to the west of the new chapel and the Antonio Rosmini Garden to the east, designed around a new marble State of the Order’s Founder. Two bespoke water sculptures have been commissioned to enhance the sense of peace and tranquillity within the parlour and courtyard gardens.