Katherine House FCJ Salford

Retreats & groups

Group retreats could be organised at the house, and the facilities suited training days and meetings for churches, charities and community groups.

Accommodation was not offered to individuals seeking a personal retreat.

Contact the centre for availability and rates.

Katherine House FCJ in Salford was a Christian spirituality and conference centre on Singleton Road, owned and run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus. For more than twenty years the sisters offered the house as a resource to people of all faiths and none, hosting conferences, retreats, study groups, prayer and quiet time for those who sought space to reflect, learn and pray together in a peaceful setting.

The centre was created as a place of welcome and accompaniment, a place where visitors could spend time in fellowship, share a meal, join a retreat or simply withdraw for a period of stillness and discernment. Its rhythm moved between silence and conversation, between contemplative life and the busy life of the surrounding city, with the house offering hospitality that many guests described as lovely, warm and genuinely attentive to the needs of each community that came through its doors.

Living alongside the sisters at Katherine House meant sharing in a rhythm of prayer, study and daily life. The Faithful Companions of Jesus are an international congregation with roots in the Church of England and a long tradition of forming people in faith through community life, spiritual practice and theological learning. Their ministry combined the contemplative with the active, offering time for prayer, for reading, for conversation and for serving others.

Those who came to the house often arrived from very different backgrounds and faith traditions, and the centre's openness meant that each person could bring their own questions and doubts. Over the years the sisters heard stories of hard decisions, of sadness and of hope, and they held those stories with respect. For many guests the experience of being listened to, accepted and accompanied in discernment was itself a source of blessing.

Retreats and group stays at Katherine House made use of the house's facilities and its spacious, calm rooms, allowing conferences, residential courses and prayer groups of varying sizes to be hosted. The programme typically balanced teaching and silence, with Bible study, theology, workshops and shared meals alongside periods of free time that invited reflection, rest and the chance to notice what was quietly calling for attention.

After many years of faithful service, the sisters discerned that the house was no longer able to continue its work as a spirituality and retreat centre. The decision was marked by sadness but also by a sense of peace and gratitude, and it was shared openly with the many friends, regulars and former guests who had become part of the community there. Reflecting on the years spent at Katherine House, the sisters spoke fondly of the people who had prayed, studied, eaten and laughed with them.

The story of Katherine House does not end simply with the closing of the centre. The house remains a place within the memory and imagination of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, and the relationships formed there continue in other forms of ministry, in the community and in the lives of those who were formed by it. For those who were received into the life of the house, the sense of what it meant remains strong, even as the building passes to new horizons and new purposes.

Katherine House FCJ Salford is remembered as a place of Christian hospitality in the north of England, a home of prayer, learning and shared life offered freely to people of all faiths and none. The story it holds is one of service, discernment and gratitude: a house where people found space to be still, to think, to be accompanied, and where the faithful companions of Jesus learned together what it means to live as companions in faith.

Film Club

Screenings took place on Third Tuesdays from 7:00–9:30pm and Third Thursday afternoons from 1:30–4:00pm, each followed by friendly discussion groups. More about the Film Club.