Agnes Mason

Agnes Mason (10 August, 1849 – 19 December, 1941) was a British nun. She was the founder of the Community of the Holy Family ( A religious order of the Anglican Communion).

Life

Mason was born in Laugharne Township in 1849. 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 went into social work. Another brother George Edward Mason was the rector at Whitwell and she spent some years helping him before she went to Newnham College, Cambridge. After gaining her degree she taught at Bedford College.^[1]

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 porch of Holmhurst St Mary

The community remained small but it did establish teaching locations in London, St Leonards, Leeds, Cambridge and at All Saints' College, Nainital in India. In 1909 Mason published "Saint Theresa: The History of Her Foundations" which she had translated.^[2] 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.^[3]

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

References