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School Houses and Charity

The School Houses are a well established and traditional part of life at Our Lady of Lourdes. Every child in our school is assigned a school house when they start the school.  

Houses work in two main areas - competitive- where we use the year long house competition using points and specific house events which, over the course of the year, traverse all areas of the school curriculum; and with House Charities. This is where each house supports a specific charity, and this work is led by our house captains. The work done through House Charities enables us to share the love of God in our community.  

Our House Charities are a key way in which we are able to share the values of our school with our wider community, whether that be in our immediate locality of Leigh on Sea, our area of Southend-on-Sea, our place in our country, or in the world. 


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

See about the work done in our House Charities here


 

 

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                175

           125


Below is information about our different house names: 

Carmel

Our Lady of Mount Carmel is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in her role as patroness of the Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian hermits living on Mount Carmel in the Holy Land during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century. They built in the midst of their hermitages a chapel which they dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.

Since the 15th century, popular devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel has centred on the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, also known as the Brown Scapular. Traditionally, Mary is said to have given the Scapular to an early Carmelite named Saint Simon Stock. "Receive, my beloved son, this habit of thy order: this shall be to thee and to all Carmelites a privilege, that whosoever dies clothed in this shall never suffer eternal fire .... It shall be a sign of salvation, a protection in danger, and a pledge of peace.

fATIMA

Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children in the small village of Fatima in Portugal in 1917.  Firstly, she identified herself as an ‘Angel of Peace’ encouraging the children to accept the sufferings that the Lord allowed them to undergo as amends for the sins which offend Him, and to pray constantly for the conversion of sinners. Then, she appeared again as ‘a woman all in white, more brilliant than the sun’ she declared that she came from ‘Heaven’ and asked them to pray and devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to “say the Rosary every day, to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.”

In the last apparition the woman revealed her name as ‘the Lady of the Rosary.’ That same day, 70,000 people had turned out to witness the apparition, following a promise by the woman that she would show the people that the apparitions were true. They saw the sun make three circles and move around the sky in an incredible zigzag movement in a manner which left no doubt in their minds about the truth of the apparitions. 

LOURDES

The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in 1858 in the vicinity of Lourdes in France. The first of these is the apparition of 11 February 1858, when 14-year old Bernadette Soubirous told her mother that a "lady" spoke to her in the cave of Massabielle while she was gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. Similar apparitions were reported on seventeen occasions that year, until the climax revelation of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception took place.

wALSINGHAM

Our Lady of Walsingham is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated by Roman Catholics and Anglicans associated with the Marian apparitions to Richeldis de Faverches, a pious English noblewoman, in 1061 in the village of Walsingham in NorfolkEngland. Lady Richeldis had a building structure named "The Holy House" built in Walsingham a replica of the home in which the Annunciation took place; it later became a shrine and place of pilgrimage.

In passing on his guardianship of the Holy House, Richeldis's son Geoffrey left instructions for the building of a priory in Walsingham. Pope Pius XII  gave instructions for the crowning of Mary’s image on 15 August 1954 with a gold crown, funded by her female devotees, that is now adored in the Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham.