Papers of Everild Feeny

The archive consists of:

- press cutting album (1977-1994) and index

- UK research material relating to St Joan's Alliance, Catholics for a Changing World, Women in Ministry, Distinctive Dioconate, the Society of St Margaret, etc (1988-1995)

- United States of America and Canada research material relating to Priests of Equality and the Women's Ordination Conference (1992-1995)

- correspondence re Catholic Women's Ordination Day (1993-1995)

- campaign file for Catholic Women's Ordination Day (1994-1995) and Vatican II and Planet Earth; further resource material (1994-1995)

- books and photocopy manuscript by Feeny (1995-1996)

- scrapbook by Feeny (1937-1999)

Everild Mary Feeny (1911-fl. 2000) was born on 15 Mar 1911 into a large Catholic family in Merseyside. She trained at the Liverpool College of Art from 1926 to 1932, winning painting scholarships in 1928 and 1929. She taught in many parts of England, retiring in 1973. She exhibited her art in London and Paris and held six solo exhibitions in Liverpool. She painted a mural (9.25 (w) x 3.65 (h) metres) of the Resurrection in the Church of Our Redeemer at Selfors in central Norway in 1971. With a strong interest in theatre, she was a scenic designer and a director of amateur plays in Liverpool including 'Tartuffe' with Leonard Rossiter, and won the Theatre Clwyd, Mold, three-day amateur festival in 1986 with her own play 'Keep lookin' up!'. In 1977 she began writing letters to the Roman Catholic press, and later joined several campaigning organisations with the same aims in both the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. A number of articles by her were published and she was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 programme 'Women's Hour' in 1995. She inaugurated the Catholic Women's Ordination Day in the UK in 1993 which became an annual event on every second Saturday in September c.1990s. Everild was an Associate of Notre Dame de Namur and she wrote two books: 'Peeps Round the World Diary' published in Mar 1995 which describes a trip around the world; 'Deist Catechism of Christian Doctrine' was published in Mar 1996.

This collection is available for research. Readers are advised to contact The Women's Library in advance of their first visit.

The collection was deposited the library by Miss Feeny in 1995 and 1997. A further deposit was made by Myra Poole in 2002.

The Women's Library Catalogue

The Women's Library also hold the papers of the St Joan's International Alliance (2SJA), the Anglican Group for the Ordination of Women (5AGO); the records of Catholic Women's Ordination (5RCW); the Records of the Society for the Ministry of Women in the Church (5SMW); Movement for the Ordination of Women (6MOW); the Papers of Dorothea Edith Belfield (7DEB); the Papers of Ursula Roberts Women (7URO), including correspondence from her work for 5AGO; the Papers of Mairin Valdez (7MAV); and the Papers of Victoria Lidiard (7VLI). There are also some press cuttings relating to women's ordination (c.1919-1950) in The Printed Collections.