Also known as the Park Village Community, this was the first Anglican convent since the Reformation. It was founded in Park Village West. The sisterhood was financed by a committee of wealthy and powerful men, including William Gladstone, and was under the direction of Dr Pusey. Edward Pusey (1800-82) was a leading figure in the Oxford Movement, along with Cardinal Newman and Cardinal Manning. One of the founding members living at Park Village was Jane Ellacombe, the daughter of a cleric; another was Mary Bruce.
Meanwhile, in 1849 Lydia Sellon (1821–76) created the Devonport Sisters of Mercy, or the Devonport Sisterhood. The two sisterhoods has close ties and in 1856 they merged, under Sellon's leadership.
The collapse of the Park Village group was brought about by a disagreement about what their role should be: to minister to the poor, or to lead a sequestered life of devotion. Without strong leadership the group broke up, most of the sisters joining the Devonport group which took a new name: The Congregation of Religious of the Society of the Most Holy Trinity, or more briefly, the Society of the Holy Trinity.
In 1854 when Florence Nightingale travelled to the Crimea she had taken 38 nurses, 14 of which were nuns from what would become the Society of the Holy Trinity, so some were probably from the Park Village Community.
In later years the membership of the Society reduced in number such that it was wound up on the death of the last Reverend Mother in 2004.
Information from Victorian Web, Wikiwand, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Ham & High, Ascot Priory.
The sisterhood was responsible for the creation of a hospital. Lost Hospitals of London describes how St Saviour's Hospital was started: "One of the nuns {of the Sisterhood of the Holy Cross}, Sister Clara, who had joined the order in 1847, donated the money with which to build a convent on a site in Osnaburgh Street, off Euston Road, facing the Holy Trinity Church. Building work began in 1850 and was completed in two years. Built in the Victorian Gothic style, it had three storeys and a basement. It was named St Saviour's .... The Sisterhood moved to the new premises in 1852 and Dame Palmer, the wife of Sir Henry Palmer, a friend of Dr Pusey, established a small hospital with 12 beds within the convent. In 1856 the Sisterhood amalgamated with the Society of the Most Holy Trinity (the second Anglican Sisterhood to be established, in 1849 in Devonport - it was more commonly known as the Society of the Holy Trinity). ... The Osnaburgh Street premises were demolished in 1963 to make way for the widening of Euston Road."
