This book is a history of nuns who in the 1830s established Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire.In the 1620s, when England was hostile to Roman Catholicism, they had founded an English Benedictine community at Cambrai in Flanders.  They were there 170 years, but during the French Revolution they lost their home and possessions, suffered serious privation in prison and fled to England in 1795.For forty years they looked for a long-term home to re-establish the enclosed contemplative life which they had in France.  Although suspicion of Catholics was still strong in England, these determined women managed, with help, to start afresh in 1838 at the Stanbrook Hall estate, adapting it to their needs.  E. W. Pugin designed magnificent neo-Gothic buildings for their worship and as their home.Eventually it all became more than their declining numbers could maintain so they moved to new eco-friendly accommodation in Yorkshire in 2009.  Pugin’s historic buildings, sensitively adapted, are now a luxury hotel and conference centre.