Stonyhurst College as a school dates back to 1593 when its antecedent, the Jesuit College at St Omer, was founded in Flanders to educate English Catholics. The history of the present school buildings dates as far back as 1200 AD.
Stonyhurst Hall
The earliest deed concerning the "Stanihurst" dates from 1200 AD and can now be found in the Arundell Library in the college, whilst the earliest evidence of a building on the site is from 1372 when John de Bayley was licensed to have an oratory there; the archway in the Bayley Room, within the 'Blind Tower', is believed to date from the fourteenth century, and may well be the only remnant of that earlier building.A Stonyhurst Handbook for Visitors and Others, third edition, 1963 The oldest portion of the extant buildings however, the Shireburn Mansion (Stonyhurst Hall), was founded by the Roman Catholic, Richard Shireburn, a descendant of the Bayley family, whose son attended the College at St Omer. He built the gatehouse and open cupolas (known as "the towers") on top of an older settlement dating from 1592. The design of the gatehouse incorporates four of the classical orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite). Three similar designs appear on the buildings of Merton and Wadham College in Oxford, though those at Stonyhurs antedates them all by more than a decade.A Stonyhurst Handbook for Visitors and Others, 3rd edition, 1963, p. 46 In places the exterior walls of this part of the building are as much as thick.A Stonyhurst Handbook for Visitors and Others, third edition, 1963, p. 46
In 1648, during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's army encamped near the hall on their way to the Battle of Preston. Cromwell spent the night at Stonyhurst and is reputed to have slept on a table, in the middle of the Great Hall, in full armour. He is said to have preferred this option to a bed because of fear of assassination and mistrust of his Catholic, royalist hosts. He was quoted as saying it was "the best half house" he had seen (the Hall was at that time still unfinished).
Richard Shireburn's successor and grandson, Sir Nicholas Shireburn, began an extensive building scheme to extend the "half house", and completed the great hall, gardens and avenue so that it could be a great manor house. Two ponds, each measuring by were constructed in 1696, along with the "causeway" between, today known as the Avenue. His son Richard was poisoned in the gardens in 1702, and with no male heir Nicholas ceased building. Upon his death in 1717, the buildings passed to his wife and then to their sole heir, Maria Shireburn, Duchess of Norfolk. The Duchess was married to Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk, and lived at Arundel Castle in Sussex. Unoccupied, the buildings at Stonyhurst began to fall into disrepair.
In 1754, the estate was inherited by her cousin, Edward Weld (Senior). After his death it passed to Weld's eldest son, also Edward. Edward, who was to be Maria Fitzherbert's first husband, fell off his horse three months after the wedding and died intestate; the estate passed to Edward senior's third son and Edward's youngest brother, Thomas in 1761. Already living in Lulworth Castle, and able to dispense with an additional estate, and as a former pupil of the English Jesuit Colleges of St Omer and Liège, and a philanthropist, Weld stepped in to save the refugee Jesuit schools in France. He resolved in 1794 to donate his Lancashire estate, including the buildings, with of land to the Society of Jesus for the purpose of settling them and their evacuated charges from Northern France and the Austrian Netherlands.
The original hall has been altered and extended over the years to become one of the largest inhabited buildings in Europe and achieving Grade I listed status from English Heritage.
The village of Hurst Green, Lancashire developed with the hall. Richard Shireburn built the village school in 1686. He also built an almshouse on Longridge Fell, the predecessor of the Shireburn Almshouses, which his son Nicholas built in about 1707. The latter was dismantled in 1946 and re-erected in the village.
The College 1593-1794
The story of the school starts at St Omer in what was then the Spanish Low Countries in 1593, where a college was founded by Father Robert Parsons for English boys, unable to receive a Catholic education in Elizabethan England. As such it was one of a number of expatriate English schools operating on the European mainland during the centuries when Catholicism was proscribed in England.
In 1762, when the French Parlement turned against the Jesuits, the school, in what was then a part of France, was forced to move. During subsequent decades, when the Jesuit Order was suppressed in most countries, the college was one of the institutions through which it managed to maintain a continuous existence.
After St Omer (still known in Stonyhurst parlance by its old English name of St. Omers), the college settled in Bruges where it continued until 1773 when it was again forced to move, reassembling at Liège, under the protection of its bishop.
In 1794 yet another move was forced upon the school, and a new home was found at Stonyhurst Hall in Lancashire, an ideal county for the school to settle in because it was still a Catholic strongholdT. E. Muir, Stonyhurst, pp. 55-61, esp. p.56: Lancashire, the "very Catholic county" and its rural, isolated character provided the hope that the school would be left alone by the authorities. Not taking any chances however, a number of hiding places were created throughout the building should the Jesuits face persecution again, and when Saint Mary's Hall was constructed in the following century, a secret escape tunnel, which still survives, was also built linking the seminary to an exit in the gardens.
The honour of being the last student at Liège and the first at Stonyhurst was claimed by a George Lambert Clifford whose bust is today on display in the Do Room; it is recorded that he and a fellow pupil from Liège, Charles Brooke, were the first of the migrants to arrive at the Stonyhurst mansion and raced down the Avenue together, but whilst his antagonist was waiting to be let in, Clifford spotted an open window and darted in, to be remembered by posterity as Stonyhurst's first pupil.Hewitson, Stonyhurst College, Present and Past, (Preston, 1888), pp. 32-33
1794–1980s When Clifford and his fellow pupils of Liège first arrived at Stonyhurst Hall, the buildings were in an extremely bad state of disrepair, and a temporary structure was built next to the east wing to house the boys. This "temporary" building still exists, and is known as Shirk.
A number of other buildings were added in the early 19th century, including the new church of St Peter's, in the Gothic style of the chapel at King's College, Cambridge.
By the 1880s new building works began on the school, including removal of the grand stairs in the quad and subsequently the west wing. The temporary structures of 'Shirk' and the new west wing served the school well, but by late 19th century it needed to expand again and work was started on the south front, including the building of the Boys Chapel and the Academy Room. The south front took a considerable amount of time to build, because much of the land was swamp, resulting in the need for deeper foundations, which also created extra space. The work began in 1876 to replace the Old Playground front of 1809; the total cost of the construction (minus architect's fees) was £123,205.5s.6d. (less than the cost of refurbishing the dormitories in the same building 130 years later).A Stonyhurst Handbook for Visitors and Others, 3rd edition, p. 33, 1963
Stonyhurst was notable for its scientific activities, including the meteorological records of the Observatory (built in 1838). The school also prided itself on producing gentlemen philosophers: philosophers was the term used for students pursuing a course of education above secondary level at a time when Catholics were forbidden from attending Oxford or Cambridge both by English law and also by a Papal prohibition. Gas lighting was another early technological innovation at the school during this period, and the school had its own power station.
From the 1960s onwards, the Stonyhurst went through a number of changes, partly reflecting those in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, but also attributable in part to the growing secular tone of British society. The number of Jesuit instructors fell steadily, reflecting the changed priorities of Catholic religious orders and the dwindling numbers of the English Jesuit province. These changes led to the closing of another Jesuit boys' public school, Beaumont College, in 1966; Beaumont and Stonyhurst amalgamated. With the addition of these new pupils, Stonyhurst had to expand again and the New Wing was built beside the wing erected in the 1800s to house the Arundell Library.
The former preparatory school to Beaumont College, St John's Beaumont School continues to send a significant number of its leavers to Stonyhurst.
1986–2006 After Fr Michael Bossy's fifteen-year headmastership, in 1986 the college acquired its first lay headmaster, Giles Mercer. Mercer brought in a number of changes during his time, and developed particular areas of the school. By the end of the 1980s, the school opened a new indoor swimming pool, new squash courts, a new gym and various refurbished classrooms and playrooms. Scenes from the film Three Men and a Little Lady were shot at the college.
In 1993, the school celebrated 400 years since its foundation at Saint-Omer, and in 1994 200 years since its foundation at Stonyhurst Hall. Mercer set up the Centenaries appeal to raise money for new building works, including the refurbishment of the science laboratories, the Bread rooms (now English department classrooms), the language classrooms, the Ambulacrum (sports hall) and numerous other areas. The appeal also went towards building the new Centenaries Theatre. As part of the celebrations a play written by Fr William Hewett SJ was performed at the new theatre outlining the history of Stonyhurst.