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Title
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Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens
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short title
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Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens
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Description
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Ushaw is home to a broad collection of fine art, religious and secular objects, archives and books. For over 200 years, Ushaw was a Catholic seminary. During this time, objects were acquired, displayed and used. Our collection of Nazarene School paintings and 19th century sculpture are of particular note. Religious objects encompass church plate, recusant chalices and an important collection of clerical textiles. Our Library, described by the historian Eamon Duffy as ‘unquestionably the most important Catholic library in Britain’, contains over 50,000 individual volumes. The library encompasses early printed books, incunabula, pamphlet material and printed ephemera, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. These include approximately 3,000 British sixteenth and seventeenth century items, a substantial amount of continental printing from across Europe, plus several Chinese, Turkish and Arabic texts. Our collections are housed and displayed in a range of listed buildings, most of which were designed by the Pugin family. Some of our collections are on permanent display, others are displayed within temporary exhibitions.
Ushaw is open to the public to visit everyday, with exhibitions, a café, gardens and architectural gems to explore. The heritage collections can be consulted by appointment only.
