Father Ignatius

Born Joseph Leycester Lyne on 23 November 1837 in London, he was educated at St Paul’s School and at Glenalmond College in Scotland. A contemporary described him as ‘a gentle man of simple manners - a very fine head and brow and entirely possessed by his one ideal.’ His one ideal was to bring about a return to a pre-Reformation but non-papal Catholicism in England. He commenced a movement to introduce monasticism into the Church of England, and built a monastery for monks and nuns at Capel-y-finn, a few miles above the mediaeval Llanthony Priory in the Black Mountains near Abergavenny in Wales. Members of the order followed the rules and wore the habit of the Order of St. Benedict.

Father Ignatius was heavily ridiculed by his contemporaries and his establishment eventually failed. He died on 16 October 1908.

Photographed by Mason and Co of London.