St Joseph’s was founded in 1872 as an orphanage for Roman Catholic girls after an endowment from local beneficiary Mrs Maria Holland was received in order to provide a charitable service for the town of Preston. Local architect R.W. Hughes designed and built the orphanage as a two storey red brick building in a high gothic style with a tower over the original entrance secluding an inner courtyard which at its time stood proud on the corner of Theatre street. The catholic diocese of Lancaster employed the services of a group of Dutch nuns who ran the orphanage on their own called the 'Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy’. They originally looked after 25 children, but at its height over 50 orphans lived their early lives here. Eventually the need for a central location in the town for treatment of the sick poor was realised by Mrs Holland, and the institute (later to become Mount Street Hospital – see gallery) was built onto the orphanage in 1877. Mrs Holland died just a year later, but left the bulk of her fortune as a permanent endowment to the institution. This lead to the continued growth of St Joseph’s over the years, including a new wing opened in 1958 by Princess Marina the Duchess of Kent, and the combined site continued to function well into the late 20th century. The vast majority of orphaned children in Preston and certain parts of Lancashire will have had memories of St Joseph’s and for this reason it has remained a sentimental part of the town’s heritage. In its final years the orphanage buildings were used as part of the hospitals nursing school and it continued to be the convent for the order of nuns, who built a small link passage to link both buildings. When the adjacent mount street hospital closed in 1982, it never saw any further use, but by 1986 the entire site was eventually sold to businessman David Gornall, who built the accommodation block on the opposite side of the courtyard to use parts of the orphanage as a care home for elderly people practising Catholicism, continuing to make use of the ornate chapel communal areas thus preventing the Victorian building from falling too soon into disrepair. This only lasted so long, and the care home closed its doors in 2007. St Joseph’s has been locked up ever since, with planning permission to convert or replace the buildings with 82 flats eventually falling through due to the recession, St Josephs has fallen heavily into decay. The orphanage has always been notoriously well sealed, yet nature has taken over the courtyard and bad weather has tormented the upper floors of these 150 year old buildings, with many parts of the site now inaccessible. There are however still layers upon layers of history to be found here, stretching right back to the 1870’s through to its last days of use, it’s safe to say its days are now undoubtedly numbered.
