St. Edmund's College, Ware
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St Edmund's College is the oldest Catholic school in England. It is an exclusive public school set in 440 acres of Hertfordshire countryside.
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[edit] History
Douay: 1568-1793
St Edmund's College, the oldest Catholic school in England, is a continuation on English soil of the English College that was founded by Cardinal William Allen at Douay in Flanders in 1568. Originally intended as a seminary to prepare priests to work in England to keep alive Catholicism, it soon also became a boys' school for Catholics, who were debarred from having such institutions in England. Many of its students, both priests and laymen, returned to England to be put to death under the anti-Catholic laws. The College includes amongst its former alumni 20 canonised and 133 beatified martyrs.
Silkstead, Twyford, Standon & Old Hall Green: 1662-1793
Later on, sometime during the second half of the 17th century, a small Catholic school was begun in Hampshire. It was opened by a priest at Silkstead prior to 1662, and then transferred to Twyford, near Winchester. It was conducted in great secrecy, and was for boys or preparatory school age, intending to proceed to the English College to complete more advanced studies. The poet Alexander Pope was a student at this school, although he did not proceed to Douay. Twyford was closed in 1745 on account of anti-Catholic feeling caused by the Jacobite rebellion, but Bishop Richard Challoner re-established the school in Hertfordshire at Standon Lordship in 1749, in a property owned by the Aston family. In 1769, Bishop James Talbot moved the school to its current site at Old Hall Green, near Puckeridge, and it became known as Old Hall Green Academy.
Old Hall Green: 1793-present
The work of the English College in Douay was brought to an end by the French Revolution. In October 1793 the College property was confiscated. Professors and students came back to England where, as a result of the Relief Acts, the penal laws against Catholics were considerably relaxed. Bishop John Douglass, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, realised that the time had come to replace the English College, and the earliest refugees joined the students at Old Hall Green Academy.
On 16 November 1793 - the feast of Saint Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury - a new College was instituted.
The establishment of St Edmund's College was the beginning of the restoration of colleges and seminaries throughout England. The remaining staff and students arrived from Douay by 1795, and not before student from the North had left and established a separate foundation which is now Ushaw College, near Durham. A gift of £10,000 from John Sone, a Hampshire Catholic, enabled St Edmund's to be established in new buildings designed by James Taylor of Islington, who had himself been a student at the Old Hall Green Academy.
The fortunes of the College varied throughout the 19th century, and at times it seemed as if the school might have to close. In 1853 a chapel designed by Augustus Welby Pugin was completed. This took place during the episcopate of Bishop Thomas Griffiths, who had been the College's President from 1818 until 1834, and had done much to give the College a sound financial basis.
The era of Vicars Apostolic ended in 1850 with the restoration of the Hierarchy. In 1869, the Archbishop of Westminster, Henry Edward Manning, set up a seminary in Hammersmith, and for the first time St Edmund's ceased to be a theological college. In 1874, the junior boys were separated from the rest of the College into St Hugh's Preparatory School, in a house originally built by Pugin for the Oxford convert W G Ward. In 1893 his son, Bernard Ward, was appointed President, and he started a scheme of rebuilding and improvements. Numbers in the school increased significantly, and in 1904 Archbishop Francis Bourne decided to return the seminarians to the College. A new wing was built to house them, and this part of the College eventually became known as Allen Hall, after Cardinal William Allen the founder of the English College at Douay.
The College became considerably run down during the First World War. However, a legacy of money became available to Cardinal Bourne, and this was used to carry out badly needed repairs and new additions.
The College celebrated the quater-centenary of its foundation in 1968. 1975 saw the departure of the seminarians for the second time: they moved to Chelsea but retained the name of Allen Hall. The school expanded considerably during the 1970s. In 1974, girls from the nearby Poles Convent and elsewhere were admitted into the sixth form as the first step towards complete coeducation, which was accomplished with the closure of Poles Convent in 1986.
In 1996 the Infants Department was opened in St Hugh's, which now means that the College can educate students from age 3-18.
[edit] Notable alumni
- Francis Barraud Painter of Nipper, the HMV dog
- Michel Jean Cazabon Artist
- Sir Edward Henry Bt Pioneer of fingerprints
- Dr Reggie Fuller Scripture scholar
- Dr Bruce Kent Peace campaigner
- Ensign Everard March Phillipps VC Hero of the Indian Mutiny
- James Lynam Molloy Poet
- Bernard Molloy Member of Parliament
- Nick Nieland Commonwealth Games Javelin Gold-Medallist
- Henry Oxenham Controversialist & poet
- Sir Ralph Richardson Actor
- William Scholl Footwear designer & businessman
- Archbishop Fulton Sheen Television evangelist
- Walter Swinburn Jockey
- Aiden Turner Actor
- Cardinal Herbert Vaughan Archbishop of Westminster
- Bishop Bernard Ward Bishop of Brentwood
- Archbishop Derek Worlock CH Archbishop of Liverpool
- Paul Alexander Zino Ornithologist after whom Zino's Petrel is named
[edit] References
- David J S Kay, The Buildings of St Edmund's College (St Edmund's College: 2000) ISBN 0-9538316-0-4
- David J S Kay, The People of St Edmund's College (The Edmundian Association: 2003) ISBN 0-9546125-0-7
- David J S Kay, St Edmund's College Prayer Book (The Edmundian Association: 2006) ISBN 0-9546125-1-5
