St Joseph's Society
My home parish is St Marie’s, Standish, as it was over time to Mgr. Thomas Adamson and Fathers Bob Hilton, Tom Cheetham, Peter Wilkinson and Peter McGrail.
As a young boy, I too felt drawn to priesthood, and at Whitsun 1964, the Vocations Director for the Salesians offered me a visit to Shrigley Park (the sport was an enticement!), but my father drew my attention to the observatory at Upholland College, visible from our house, and to Fr Cheetham who was a family friend.
So, in September 1965 it was Upholland College and Underlow for me, in the same class as Steve Alker, Graham Kidd and Chris Kelly. Mgr. Breen was the Rector, and the first term was from September to Boxing Day. Later, with Vatican II, things began to relax, and subsequently we went home before Christmas and half term holidays and family days were introduced.
The College diet wasn’t entirely to my liking. I once contracted scurvy, and more worryingly, jaundice that went undiagnosed, but regular food parcels from home (vitamin packed fruit, mainly) got me through eventually.
Sport in the curriculum at Upholland also sustained me, especially when Fr Cheetham introduced athletics and tennis, and some of us took full advantage of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. For this, Fathers Snape and Mercer took some of us by car to the Lake District. There we were taught how to set up camp, cook and map read, for example, through to qualification and award.
Music played a part in our lives. Fr Snape directed the Schola and taught us to sight read, and I also took piano lessons with an outside tutor.
But it was the quality of the education for which I have much to be grateful. I remember Fathers Peter Doyle, Denis Harvey and Bill Maxwell as excellent and dedicated teachers, and for my A Levels, Bob Hilton (Latin), Frank Burke (French) and Bernard Higham (Spanish) got me through. But my two heroes were Fathers Tom Cheetham and Tom Worden, both of whom played their part in my decision to go to Ushaw and do a BA Hons Theology degree at Durham University.
By 1978, the amalgamation of the Junior Seminaries of Ushaw and Upholland had been completed, and Archbishop Derek Warlock instructed that I be ordained in the College chapel; the last Upholland student to do so, as an encouragement to the younger seminarians, perhaps.
My first Mass the following day was concelebrated with many brother priests, alongside our new parish priest…Fr Joe Mercer.
At a recent retreat, I reflected on my strong conviction that God is about love and mercy, and I concluded that this reasoning had not come to me from my childhood faith, but had been learned post Vatican II from the staff at Upholland and Ushaw, for which I am most grateful.
Now, Upholland College is closed, but to my mind God is not concerned with buildings. Rather, I hope I can live up to what Peter Doyle described as ‘the lasting achievement of Upholland’; that of supplying committed, pastorally minded priests to serve the spiritual needs of the people, and forming lay people to make a real contribution to their communities.