st josephs seminary in upholland wigan

History

St joseph’s Seminary is located Walthew Park in Upholland, Wigan and is a former Roman Catholic Seminary which started to be built in 1880 and opened in 1883. The building has recently been unconsecrated.

The Seminary flourished until the early 1960s, but a sharp drop in enrollment meant that the northern bishops were forced to consolidate the activities of St Joseph’s in Upholland and Ushaw, with all junior seminarians in the north attending  St Josephs and all senior seminarians attending Ushaw.

As enrollment continued to decline it became a boarding school for boys considering a vacation.

In 1986 the total number of students was down to 82, of whom only 54 were Church students, and it was no longer viable to educate them on the premises. From 1987 the remaining students attended St. John Rigby College in nearby Orrell for their schooling, an arrangement that continued until the very last of these students left Upholland in 1992.

taken from Wikipedia

Our Day out at St. Joseph’s

We’d heard about St Joseph’s Seminary through an urban photography website and wanted to check it out while it was still there, so we went down with a Google map in hand.

We realised that getting in through the front entrance was a no go with security and CCTV at the gate. We drove on along the road until we found a public footpath, at which point we parked up and followed the path, which luckily brought us to the back of the Seminary. There were no walls to climb, we just walked into the grounds.

We don’t go to these kind of places intending to cause any damage, but merely take photographs.

Having walked around for a couple of hours we were approached by a security guard who was very helpful in providing some information about the building before leaving us to continue walk around the grounds.

The shear size of the place is very impressive, but just a shame it is being allowed to deteriorate so much. We were told that the building was intended to be used for luxury apartments but that the owners had run out of funding. Lets hope it gets done sooner rather than later before it becomes to late to save it.

GOING…GOING…ALMOST GONE!

The general accepted facts about  the history of The Limes are it was built about 1873 for John Heyes of JJ Heyes the cotton mill magnates who built Heyes mill where Asda now stands (corner of Atherleigh bypass and Kirkhall Lane). He lived there with his family and when his surviving daughter Anne died she bequeathed the house to Leigh infirmary. It was split into flats and used for residence of the single doctors. It has now been derelict since at least May 2010 as there are pics posted on local sites that show it boarded up but in a much better state than we saw it today.

There seems to be no recent mention of it until now and it remains a mystery as to why it was left to rot for so long without a decisive move to ensure its preservation. Interestingly the convent next door or’Hollybank’ to give it its proper name was built for James the other brother at about the same time and in 2009 was on the English heritage as grade 2 listed

The house is scheduled to be demolished in the near future and will be another sad loss to Leigh’s heritage.  Wigan Council should bow there heads in shame allowing so many great buildings go to ruin within it’s boundaries.

Leigh is the nearest town to our studio in Lowton and a place I have spent much of my early life, actually living in the town for many years. As I have got older I have become increasingly interested in the towns history and begun to take notice of the towns older buildings and architecture.

Although the town has changed dramatically over the years with the decline of the mills, the closure of the mines, and emergence of a more retail oriented town, some of the towns past still is there to be discovered.

It amazes me how little I had noticed as I went about my visits to the town, walking around with my eyes wide shut much of the time.  The town has some great architectural heritage which is sadly poorly maintained.