| Date | 22 May 2015 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0076 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
Women offered refuge
MRS Mariquita Tennant (1811-1860) was a great social reformer who worked in particular in the parish of Clewer.
She was a daughter of a Spanish army officer, she married twice and lived in Florence for some time.
Her second husband was the Revd. Robert John Tennant an Anglican chaplain to the British congregation whom she married in 1840.
Her marriage was short-lived as her husband died in 1842. She then went from Florence to England.
By 1848, Mariquita was living at The Limes, a medieval house in Clewer, near to St Andrew’s Church, which belonged to her sister.
Later that year she gave refuge to Marianne George who had been abused by her stepfather.
Tennant’s original intention was to train her has a servant, as a one-off, but was persuaded by the local rector of Clewer Thomas Thellusson Carter to provide her home as a refuge for other women who were in moral danger.
These also included women with illegitimate children known as Magdalenes.
Tennant then set up her home as a safe haven and to help as many women as possible who had escaped from the notorious beer houses, brothels and slums of Clewer Fields.
Within a year or two, there were more than a dozen women who had been accommodated at the Limes.
Tennant then taught these women basic skills which were interspersed with religious instruction.
This was the start of a new religious sister hood which she was to become the ‘self-styled’ lady superior.
This was similar to a community established by the EB Pusey at Park Village West in Camden Town. The rule of Park Village was adapted to suit her needs.
The house was known as the Clewer House of Mercy and in 1850 she was assisted by Charlotte Julia Weale who kept notes of inmates, timetables and worked on religious instruction.
In 1851 the community moved to a large house on Hatch Lane called Nightingale Place which had a 15-acre estate attached.
Tennant left in 1851 and lived at her private home at Trinity House in Windsor. She attended the nearby Holy Trinity Church and shortly before her death opened a meeting room in the poor area of Bier Lane known as ‘Our Room’.
Mariquita Tennant died on February 21, 1860, at 9 Claremont Road, Windsor. She was buried in Clewer Churchyard.
Her legacy was the community she founded which was to last until 2002.
MEMORIAL: The simple grave of Mariquita Tennant in Clewer Churchyard
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