Brighton Gazette

Wednesday September 9 1914

AT HAYWARDS HEATH.

During the past few days groups of refugees from Belgium have arrived at Haywards Heath, many of them nuns, who have found refuge at the Priory of Our Lady. Temporary homes for others have been provided in the neighbourhood of the town. The Priory of Our Lady at Haywards Heath is a Roman Catholic establishment where the English Regular Canonesses of the Order of St. Augustine receive young ladies for education from England and the Continent. The mother home of the Order is at Bruges, which is not many miles from Ostend, and the occupants have had to leave. The refugees come from Malines and Louvain, and they confirm the stories already current, outrage, desecration and wanton destruction having been given of the German troops.

The full depth of sufferings of the Belgian people will never be known by the English people. They are too horrible for description. Outstanding was the irrespective of age; nuns and priests were brutally driven away, convents and other buildings wrecked and destroyed; while priests were hung and shot.