Two Anglican bishops are backing a Catholic retreat centre in Lancashire, based around the oldest surviving museum collection in the English speaking world.

The Bishop of Blackburn, Julian Henderson, and the Bishop of Burnley, Philip North, are supporting a project to revamp the Christian Heritage Project at Stonyhurst, near Blackburn, and both attended a rededication for the Old Chapel Museum and historic libraries last week.

The gesture by the two Anglican bishops, from the evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church of England respectively, came after the centre was granted £2 million last year to build a study and leadership centre.

The King of Etoni, a traditional Nigerian figure, spoke at the service last week on the persecution Christians face in northern Nigeria.

Dating back to 1609 when the first museum item was Henry VII's cope and chasuble, the Christian Heritage Centre is based on Jesuit strand of the Catholic faith, to which Pope Francis also belongs.

The £2million grant, given as the final act of the Theodore Trust – an organisation founded to make donations to churches, libraries and schools for the 'advancement of the Christian religion' – will be spent on the new centre, named after the trust.

Theodore House will be opened next year as the renovated Old Mill building, which the Christian Heritage Centre took on for an annual rent of one loaf of bread and six altar candles, according to its website.

It will host an annual leadership programme overseen by Lord Alton of Liverpool, a Catholic peer and professor at Liverpool John Moore's University.