Mercy Farm

Mercy Farm belongs to the Watford family. It once had a nunnery and was considered holy ground.

Nathaniel’s description
“When Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to Christianise England in the time of the Romans, he was received and protected by Ethelbert, King of Kent, whose wife, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, was a Christian, and did much for Augustine. She founded a nunnery in memory of Columba, which was named Sedes misericordiæ, the House of Mercy, and, as the region was Mercian, the two names became inextricably involved. As Columba is the Latin for dove, the dove became a sort of signification of the nunnery. She seized on the idea and made the newly-founded nunnery a house of doves. Someone sent her a freshly discovered dove, a sort of carrier, but which had in the white feathers of its head and neck the form of a religious cowl. And so in especial the bird became the symbol of the nuns of Mercy. The nunnery flourished for more than a century, when, in the time of Penda, who was the reactionary of heathendom, it fell into decay. In the meantime the doves, which, protected by religious feeling, had increased mightily, were known in all Catholic communities. “When King Offa ruled in Mercia about a hundred and fifty years later, he restored Christianity, and under its protection the nunnery of St. Columba was restored and its doves flourished again. In process of time this religious house again fell into desuetude; but before it disappeared it had achieved a great name for good works, and in especial for the piety of its members.

“Mercy Farm and all around it have almost the right to be considered holy ground.” (1911, Chapter 9).

Film adaption
Mercy Farm, in The Lair of the White Worm (1988), was referenced as originally being a cult center where a convent, or nunnery, was established in its place—a sore subject for Sylvia Marsh.