The monastery is the largest building in the village. In 1854, a descendant of the Camerman family made its construction possible. It soon became a girls’ boarding house. Strange histories have taken place here. Today this monument of ‘child care’ has unfortunately become a ‘worry child’.
The construction of the monastery by the Congregation of Saint Vincent-a-Paulo began on July 13, 1854 and was paid for by Maria Catharina Isabella Camerman, a descendant of a famous local family of notables. After a few months, the Franciscan Sisters of the Order of Crombeen from Ghent were able to move into the monastery. They set up a girls’ boarding house and nursed the sick from the Quarantine Service on the Scheldt.

On February 25, 1892, the monastery was expanded with an orphanage under the name ‘St. Cornelius Asylum’. The monastery chapel was consecrated on January 23, 1893. In the monastery chapel three stained glass windows have been incorporated on both sides, on the right with the three monastic vows ‘Obedientia’ (obedience), ‘Paupertas’ (poverty) and ‘Castitas’ (virginity) and on the left with the divine virtues ‘Fides’ (faith), ‘ Spes’ (hope) and ‘Caritas’ (charity). In April of the same year 1893 a new school for girls was consecrated and on September 20, 1893 a Corsetry School was started. In addition to children from the wider region, many skipper children also attended the boarding school.
In early 1866, cholera broke out on the Breem barge ‘Agnes’ and the victims were taken to Fort Liefkenshoek. Effective medication was not yet available at that time. The advice was given to warm the sick person with woolen blankets, hot sand and pitchers of warm water. The pharmacists sold ‘Elixir against Cholera’. The bodies of the deceased cholera victims were buried in the salt marshes to avoid contamination of the cemetery of Doel. A certain Jan Devos was appointed for this and did his morbid work after drinking a liter of gin for disinfection. It is said that he bit the fingers off the corpses to get the rings. Despite his risky profession, Jan Devos reached an advanced age.

During the Second World War, several Jewish children found shelter in the monastery. The monastery is listed as such in the archives of the Dossin barracks. Holocaust survivor Flora M. Singer describes in the book ‘I was but a child’, how she had been hiding in the monastery.
The number of sisters in the monastery declined in the second half of the 20th century and in 1976 the last three sisters left to the mother house in Ghent. The buildings were donated to the kerkfabriek of Doel and the municipality of Beveren took the buildings on a long lease. The municipal council carried out the necessary renovation works so that the monastery building could serve as a meeting center, as a municipal public library and as a municipal nursery and primary school. Until 2014, many socio-cultural activities took place. In 2014, the municipality of Beveren decided to no longer make the building available. Since then, the building was abandoned, it has fallen prey to vandalism. On the night of September 1 to 2, 2016, it was set on fire by unknown persons.