Carmelite Convent, Darlington

The Carmelite Nuns at Darlington kindly granted us permission to photograph their home in May 2010.

The Carmelite Convent is part if the Roman Catholic Church, belonging to the Order of the Discalced Carmelites. The Carmelite nuns number around 300, living in silence and solitude, located in seventeen Monasteries around Great Britain.

The order moved into the house at Darlington, known as Cockerton Field House, in 1830. A chapel was soon constructed and the old outhouses knocked down. A new wing was built in 1842 to contain the bakery, brewery and laundry. These were later converted into workshops used for printing.

The order was formed in the 12th century on Mount Carmel. Carmelite tradition traces the origin of the order to a community of hermits on Mount Carmel that succeeded the schools of the prophets in ancient Israel, although there are no certain records of hermits on this mountain before the 1190s.