his conversion to Catholicism the year previously. Guinness mentions his first stay at the abbey in his 1986 autobiography, Blessings in Disguise, in which he describes attending a dawn mass: Another notable actor remembered for his periods of retreat at the abbey was Ian Bannen, who had been educated at Ratcliffe College in Leicestershire. In the late 1950s, public outcry was generated by the proposed route of the M1 motorway through Charnwood Forest. On 15 November 1957, the Leicester Evening Mail wrote: "The Trappist monks went to Charnwood for peace and built the beautiful St. Bernard's Monastery. The proposed route would pass their door step if allowed to go on". Through the Evening Mail, a petition was organised and two months later the newspaper reported: "Many of the monks at Mount St. Bernard Monastery, in Charnwood, have taken a lifelong vow of silence, and therefore they are unable to speak their views on the proposed Forest motorway, which would pass within half a mile of their peaceful home. This has not prevented them from reading of the protest petition and signing it, however. Seventeen have put their names on a form sent to the monastery this week, including the Father Abbot". The petition was presented to the Ministry of Transport, which led to the rerouting of the road on to its present course. In 1978, the Abbey was visited by the New York-based artist, Stanley Roseman. The abbey was amongst the first of more than sixty monastic communities to be visited by Roseman over a period of several years. Whilst at Mount St Bernard, he painted "Father Benedict: Portrait of a Trappist Monk" and "Father Ian: Portrait of a Trappist Monk in Meditation". The latter hangs in the Musée Ingres in Montauban. The buildings were listed as Grade II in 1989, though in an architectural and historical review of more than 140 churches prepared for English Heritage and the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, April 2011, it was noted in the case of St Bernard's: "There is a strong case for upgrading the complex, or at least the abbey church, from II to II* both on grounds of architectural significance and for its historic importance in the Catholic Revival". The role of acceptance that the abbey has played in offering succour to the troubled and those in need of friendship was emphasised by reports in 1998 that the footballer Justin Fashanu