This Souvenirs du pensionnat is a poetry album of sorts. It features texts written by Lucy Timmermans’ fellow students.

Along with her cousin Iet, Lucy Timmermans (born in 1907) attended boarding school ‘Regina Coeli’ in Vught. Her album is part of our vast collection of Iet Timmermans’ letters and photographic albums, featuring subjects related to school life, trips, friends and family.

Boarding school ‘Regina Coeli’

After being driven from France by anti-religious laws, the sisters of the order of Augustinus inhabited the Eikenheuvel estate near Vught in 1903. Here, they built the ‘Regina Coeli’ boarding school. ‘Regina Coeli’, meaning ‘Queen of heaven’, became a well-known French all-girl boarding school.

In 1935, the school was officially recognised as a Secondary Girls’ School. The sisters, growing in numbers after Dutch women joined the order, also tended to the education of younger children in the parochy.

 ‘Bij de nonnen van Vught’

In 1963, the language practicum ‘Regina Coeli’ was founded. It gained national fame as a method of learning foreign languages under the name ‘Bij de nonnen van Vught’.