Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic public school providing education for boarding and day pupils, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is based on the Stonyhurst Estate, next to the village of Hurst Green, in Lancashire, in the United Kingdom. It occupies a Grade I listed building. The school has been fully co-educational since 1999. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
A precursor institution of the college was founded in 1593 by Father Robert Persons SJ at St Omer,Stonyhurst College in Encyclopædia Britannica 2008. Retrieved 9 July 2008 at a time when penal laws prohibited Catholic education in England. It relocated to Stonyhurst Hall in 1794, having moved already to Bruges in 1762 and Liège in 1773, after an old boy, Thomas Weld (of Lulworth), granted it the Stonyhurst estate. It provides boarding and day education to approximately 500 boys and girls aged 11–18. On an adjacent site, its preparatory school, St Mary's Hall, provides education for boys and girls aged 3–11.
Its alumni/ae include three Saints, twelve Beati, twenty-two martyrs, seven archbishops, seven Victoria Cross winners, a Peruvian president and prime minister, a New Zealand Prime Minister, a signatory of the American Declaration of Independence and a number of writers, sportsmen, politicians, and European royals.T.E. Muir, Stonyhurst, (St Omers Press, Gloucestershire. Second edition, 2006) ISBN 0-9553592-0-1 pp.188-192
History
Stonyhurst Hall
The earliest deed concerning the Stanihurst is held in the college's Arundell Library; it dates from approximately 1200. In 1372, a licence was granted to John de Bayley for an oratory on the site. His descendants, the Shireburn family, completed the oldest portion of the extant buildings. Richard Shireburn began building the hall, which was enlarged by his grandson Nicholas who also constructed the ponds, avenue and gardens. Following his death, the estate passed to his wife and then to sole heir, their daughter, Mary, the Duchess of Norfolk.
The college
The story of the school may be traced back to establishments in St Omer in what was then the Spanish Netherlands in 1593, where a college, under the Royal Patronage of Philip II of Spain, was founded by Fr Robert Persons SJ for English boys unable to receive a Catholic education in Elizabethan England. As such it was one of several expatriate English schools operating on the European mainland. In 1762, the Jesuits were forced to flee and re-established their school at Bruges. The school was moved in 1773 to Liège, where it operated for two decades before moving to Stonyhurst on 29 August 1794.
The number of students increased during the 19th century: the Society of Jesus was re-established in Britain at Stonyhurst in 1803, and over the century, student numbers rose from the original twelve migrants from Liège. By the turn of the following century, it had become England's largest Catholic college. Stonyhurst Hall underwent extensive alterations and additions to accommodate these numbers; the Old South Front was constructed in 1810, only to be demolished and replaced with larger buildings in the 1880s. A seminary was constructed on the estate, and an observatory and meteorological station erected in the gardens. The 20th century saw the gradual hiring of a mostly lay staff, as the number of Jesuits declined. The seminary at St Mary's Hall was closed, and the school discontinued its education of university-aged philosophers.
Since the Second World War, the buildings have been refurbished or developed. Additions include new science buildings in the 1950s and 1960s, a new boarding wing in the 1960s, a new swimming pool in the 1980s and Weld House in 2010. The school became fully co-educational in 1999.
Hodder Place, St Mary's Hall and Hodder House
The original preparatory school to Stonyhurst, Hodder Place, came into the hands of the Jesuits as part of the estate donated by alumnus Thomas Weld. Originally used as a novitiate, it became a preparatory school to the college in 1807.
St Mary's Hall, on an adjoining site to Stonyhurst, was built as a Jesuit seminary in 1828 (extended in the 1850s) and functioned until 1926, when the seminarians moved to Heythrop Hall. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and John Tolkien, son of J. R. R. Tolkien, trained as priests there. During World War II, the English College left Benito Mussolini's Italy and occupied the hall. After their return to Rome, St Mary's Hall opened as a middle school in 1946. At the same time, Hodder Place continued to educate those aged eight to eleven, until its closure and conversion into flats in 1970. Hodder Place pupils moved up to St Mary's Hall to form Hodder Playroom. As successor to Hodder Place, St Mary's Hall claims to being one of the oldest surviving preparatory school in Britain.
In 2004, the old gymnasium at St Mary's Hall was converted into new nursery and infant facilities named Hodder House, for those aged three to seven.
Religious life
The college is Catholic and has had a significant place in English Catholic history for many centuries (including events such as the Popish Plot and Gunpowder Plot conspiracies). It was founded initially to educate English Catholics on the continent in the hope that, through them, Catholicism might be restored in England.
After the school settled in England in 1794 and the Society of Jesus was officially re-established in Britain in 1803. Stonyhurst remained the headquarters of their English Province until the middle of the century; by 1851, a third of the province's Jesuits were based there. Until the 1920s, Jesuit priests were trained on site in what is today the preparatory school. There was a drop in vocations after World War I and the seminary was closed. The number of Jesuits teaching at Stonyhurst fell to a third of the staff within a decade. Since then, the Jesuit presence has been in decline, but the school continues to place Catholicism and Jesuit philosophy at its core under the guidance of a Jesuit-led chaplaincy team and the involvement of the Jesuits in its governance.
It is a long-standing practice, as with many Jesuit schools around the world, that pupils write A.M.D.G. in the top left hand corner of any piece of work they do. It stands for the Latin phrase Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam which means For the Greater Glory of God. At the end of a piece of work they write L.D.S. in the centre of the page. It stands for Laus Deo Semper which means Praise to God Always. These are both traditional Jesuit mottoes.AMDG Information on the Jesuit motto AMDG; retrieved 18 July 2008
Chapels The school has one main church, St Peter's, and five chapels: the Boys' Chapel, the Chapel of the Angels, the Sodality Chapel, the St Francis Chapel and the St Ignatius Chapel. The last two are both within the towers of St Peter's Church. The Sodality Chapel is the home of the relics of the 3rd-century Roman convert St Gordianus. The Jesuits brought his remains from the College of St Omer and held them beneath the altar since 1859. His bones were temporarily removed in 2006 while the chapel underwent restoration, but they have since been returned. The chapel is again used by the re-established Sodality. Adjacent to the Old Infirmary is the Rosary Garden, a place for spiritual contemplation, at the centre of which is a stone statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. St Peter's Church underwent repair and refurbishment in 2010–11.Refurbishment of St Peter's ; retrieved 30 November 2011
Charitable status
As a registered charity, Stonyhurst is obliged to provide benefits to the wider community under the terms of the Charities Act 2006. As such, the college is home to the local Catholic parish church, which receives worshippers from Hurst Green every day.Salford Diocese Information on St Peter's Church 2008. Retrieved 18 July 2008 Its sports facilities, including the swimming pool and all-weather pitch are available for public use; the latter was used for competitors training for the London 2012 Olympic Games.London 2012 Stonyhurst: article on London 2012, 2008. Retrieved 18 July 2008 Much of the estate has public access. Many of its facilities such as its swimming pool, leisure complex, golf course, grounds and museum are open to the public. The school has relationships with several state schools, arranging shared activities with their pupils, in particular those serving special needs children.Faith Primary School Stonyhurst: article on Faith Primary School 2007. Retrieved 18 July 2008 In addition, the school makes available some places to pupils offered on scholarship, bursaries or free of charge; almost a third of current pupils receive financial support for their places.
Motto The French motto refers to all-round development of the individual. It is inherited from the Shireburn family who once owned the original mansion on the site; the family emblem is emblazoned, in stone, with the motto, above the fireplace in the Top Refectory.
Academic In 2024, 88% of GCSE students attained 9-4 grades; there is a 99% pass rate at A-Level; and 89% pass rate for the IB Diploma. 100% of A-Level leavers take up places at universities (10% to Oxbridge) or on gap year schemes. The school's most recent inspection rated much of the education and pastoral provision as 'outstanding'.
Education during the college's early history was based on St Ignatius' Ratio Studiorum, with emphasis upon theology, classics and science, all of which still feature prominently in the curriculum. The educational practice, observed at the College of St Omer, of dividing a class into Romans and Carthaginians continued long after the migration to Stonyhurst but is not employed today; each pupil would be pitched against an opponent with the task of picking up on the other's mistakes in an attempt to score points.
Until Catholics were admitted to Oxbridge in 1854, Stonyhurst was also home to "philosopher gentlemen" studying BA courses under the London Matriculation Examination system. Their numbers began to fall after 1894 and the department was closed in 1916.T.E. Muir, Stonyhurst, (St Omers Press, Gloucestershire. Second edition, 2006) p. 151
Libraries and collections
Stonyhurst College has four main libraries: the Arundell, the Bay, the Square and the More (dedicated to Saint Thomas More).Stadwick, S.J., Hubert (1957). "Stonyhurst College:Unfamiliar Libraries II." The Book Collector 6 No.4 (winter): 343-349.
The More Library is the main library for students while the 'House Libraries' (the Arundell, the Bay, and the Square) contain many artefacts from the Society of Jesus and English Catholicism. The Arundell Library, presented in 1837 by Everard, 11th Baron Arundell of Wardour, is the most significant; it is not only a country-house library from Wardour Castle but also has a notable collection of 250 incunabula, medieval manuscripts and volumes of Jacobite interest, signal among which is Mary Tudor's Book of Hours, which it is believed was given by Mary, Queen of Scots to her chaplain on the scaffold. The manuscript Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines was written in 1354 by Henry, Duke of Lancaster. To these were added the archives of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, which include 16th-century manuscript verses by St Robert Southwell SJ, the letters of St Edmund Campion SJ (1540–81) and holographs of the 19th-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Arundell Library has a copy of the Chronicles of Jean Froissart, captured at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and held the 7th-century Stonyhurst Gospel of St John before it was loaned to the British Library, as well as a First Folio of Shakespeare.