Notre Dame Priory

Holy Family wooden church at St Leonards was moved to Hardwick House, Colebrook in 2019.

The following information is from the Nortre Dame Priory's website

The property is full of potential for securing the future of the monastery here in Tasmania. First and foremost, it guarantees the monastery privacy, allowing the monks to live out their calling to serve God in peace, and also provide a peaceful place for all those who come to visit. The property gives us plenty of room to expand to accommodate vocations, space for a large guesthouse for men within the cloister and for a ladies and families’ guesthouse for retreats outside the cloister. There will also be plenty of space for supporting ourselves and our retreat apostolate – whether that be through agricultural activities such as vineyards, orchards, our own sheep, or through some other kind of industry.

On 15 August 2018, thanks to loans from the Catholic Development Fund of Tasmania and those of several private lenders, we were able to purchase a large farm in Colebrook, named Hardwick House. The property was originally named Jerusalem Estate, in the era when Colebrook was known as Jerusalem. We have settled into our temporary monastic enclosure in the area surrounding the historic mill on the property. Now we must turn our gaze to claiming Our Lady’s land and building her monastery.

The monks of the Priory are consecrated to God by the vows of stability, conversion of ways (which encompasses both poverty and chastity) and obedience, and live a life of prayer and work in the Benedictine tradition at Rhyndaston. Their hope is to one day be established as a fully autonomous Benedictine monastery and to construct a monastery in a traditional design, something beautiful for God, to last many generations.