Agnes Mason

Agnes Mason
Born 10 August 1849
Laugharne, Carmarthenshire
Died 19 December 1941(1941-12-19) (aged 92)
Holmhurst St Mary, St Leonards
Nationality British

Agnes Mason (10 August 1849 – 19 December 1941) was a British nun.

She was the founder of a religious order of the Anglican Communion, the Community of the Holy Family.

Life

Mason was born in Laugharne in 1849.[1] She was the daughter of George William and Marianne Mason of Morton Hall in Nottinghamshire. Her brother Arthur James Mason was to be a Professor at Cambridge and her sister Harriet was a poor-law inspector and botanical illustrator. Another brother George Edward Mason was the rector at Whitwell and later principal of a theological college in the Transkei.[2] Mason spent some years educating Edward before she went to Newnham College, Cambridge. After gaining her degree she taught at Bedford College.[1]

Holmhurst St Mary
Mason used this house as a convent

From 1892 to 1895 she worked at the Guild of the Epiphany which she left. She started the Anglican Community of the Holy Family with the help of several supporters. The purpose of the community was to improve women's education. Her supporters were Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford, Walter Frere, Bishop of Truro, William Collins, Bishop of Gibraltar, George Congreve of the Society of St John the Evangelist, Charles Lindley Wood, second Viscount Halifax, president of the English Church Union, and the Roman Catholic theologian Baron von Hügel.

Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury was another of her supporters and he used his authority to establish Mason as the Mother Superior of this new group. The community remained small but it did establish teaching locations in London, Holmhurst St Mary, St Leonards, Leeds, Cambridge and in India at All Saints' College, Nainital.

In 1909 Mason published "Saint Theresa: The History of Her Foundations" which she had translated.[3] In 1913 it obtained its headquarters, or mother house, at Holmhurst St Mary, St Leonards.[1] This was a house once owned by Augustus Hare and it had been extended using the profits from his writing.[4]

Mason died in Holmhurst St Mary on 19 December 1941.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Julia Bolton Holloway, ‘Mason, (Frances) Agnes (1849–1941)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 12 Nov 2016
  2. ↑ Katherine Field, ‘Mason, (Marianne) Harriet (1845–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2010 accessed 17 April 2017
  3. ↑ Agnes Mason; E. M. Satow (24 November 2011). Saint Theresa: The History of Her Foundations. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-65545-4.
  4. ↑ Augustus Hare and Holmhurst, Umilta.net, Retrieved 13 November 2016
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