Stonyhurst Saint Mary's Hall (original) (raw)

Private day and boarding school in Clitheroe, Lancashire, England

Stonyhurst St Mary's HallLatin: Aula Sanctae Mariae
Location
Map
Clitheroe, Lancashire, England BB7 9PU
Coordinates 53°50′49″N 2°28′19″W / 53.847°N 2.472°W / 53.847; -2.472
Information
Type Private day and boarding
Motto Quant Je Puis(As much as I can)
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic (Jesuit)
Established 1807; 218 years ago (1807) (as Hodder Place) 1946 (as Saint Mary's Hall)
Department for Education URN 119825 Tables
Headmaster Christopher Cann
Gender Coeducational, since 1997
Age 3 to 11
Number of students 137~
Colours Green, White
Lines Campion, St Omers, Shireburn, Weld
Affiliated school Stonyhurst College
Diocese Salford
Patron saint Blessed Virgin Mary
Website saintmaryshall.com

Stonyhurst St Mary's Hall (commonly known as S.M.H.) is the preparatory school to Stonyhurst College. It is an independent co-educational Catholic school, for ages 3–11, founded by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). It is adjacent to Stonyhurst College, outside the small village of Hurst Green, near Clitheroe in Lancashire, England. It is primarily a day school but has some boarders. Its building was constructed in 1830 and it is a Grade II Iisted building.[1] Close by was Hodder Place School (opened in 1807) and in 1970 the pupils were transferred from Hodder Place to St Mary's Hall, giving St Mary's a claim to be the oldest preparatory school in the country.[2]

Stonyhurst College was founded in 1593 as the English Jesuit College at St Omers in present-day France, at a time when Catholic education was prohibited by law in England. Having moved to Bruges in 1762 and then Liège in 1773, due to the persecution of the Jesuit order which ran the school, it finally settled at Stonyhurst in 1794. An attempt had been made to found a preparatory school to the college at St Omers, which would have been based in Boulogne, but this was abandoned and ultimately ended by the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762.[3] In 1768 new buildings were erected for a preparatory school at Bruges; this 'Little College' was closed in 1775, two years after the migration of the college to Liège.[4] Thirteen years after the settlement in England, the preparatory school was established in 1807.

The Stonyhurst Estate donated by an old boy of the college at St Omers, Thomas Weld, included the Shireburn family Hall and a large building on the edge of the River Hodder, Hodder Place. The latter opened as a Jesuit novitiate when the Jesuits were formally re-established in Britain in 1803. Four years later, in 1807, preparatory schooling started when the youngest pupils in the school, which had settled in the Hall, were transferred to Hodder Place. It was not until 1855, however, that the preparatory school was formally opened. The building underwent extension in 1836 and again in 1869 when two towers were constructed on either side. Hodder Place continued to function as the preparatory school to the college until 1970 when it was shut and converted into residential flats.[1]

Between 1828 and 1830, a new building in Georgian style was constructed closer to the college and opened as the new novitiate, St Mary's Hall. In the nineteenth century, the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins trained as a priest there, and in the twentieth century John Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien, also trained there.[5]

The building was extended with two symmetrical wings on either side in the 1850s when the symmetry of the college's south front was also finally completed.

St Mary's Hall continued to function as a formation centre for Jesuits until 1926 when they were moved to Heythrop Hall in Oxfordshire. During World War Two, the building lay derelict until the English College moved in for the war's duration.[5] After their return to Rome, the Figures Playroom (ages 11 to 12) was transferred from the college to St Mary's Hall, which opened as a middle school to Stonyhurst in 1946.[6] When Hodder Place was closed in 1970, the pupils were moved across to St Mary's Hall to form the Hodder Playroom. As successor to Hodder Place, the school has a claim to be the oldest surviving preparatory school in Britain.[2]

In the 1980s, a fire destroyed much of the building's wooden panelling. In 1993, as part of the Stonyhurst Centenaries, celebrating the four-hundredth anniversary of the school's founding and the two-hundredth anniversary of its settlement at Stonyhurst the year later, the Centenaries Theatre was built. In 1997, the transition to becoming a fully co-educational school started.[7] In 2004, with the opening of Hodder House, the pre-school for 3-year-olds, was created.[8]

Until 2007, the school was officially known as "St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst". That year, the school officially became known as "Stonyhurst St Mary's Hall".

In September 2024, the education of pupils aged 11 to 13 was transferred from St Mary's Hall to Stonyhurst College.[6]

St Mary's Hall is a Catholic school, overseen by the Jesuits. As such, the Jesuit ethos pervades the life of the school, with emphasis upon spiritual development, reasoning skills, and the creation of "Men and Women for Others", with focuses on prayer and charity.[9]

St Mary's Hall has its own chapel where Mass is celebrated.

As at the college, pupils write AMDG 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 "To 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 be to God Always". These are both traditional Jesuit mottoes.

School organisation

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The playroom system

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Unlike most English public schools, Stonyhurst is organised horizontally by year groups (known as playrooms) rather than vertically by houses.[10]

In addition to the playrooms, there is also a system which cuts through the year groups, the "Lines", which are used mostly for sports and competitions. The Lines and colours are as follows:

Pupils remain in the same Line throughout their time at the school, and if their parents, older siblings, or grandparents etc. were also pupils, automatically enter the same Line.

In Rudiments, pupils sit the Common Entrance and/or the 11+ Scholarship examinations in preparation for entry to the college. The Common Entrance examinations were only a recent addition to the school. Before that, pupils leaving St Mary's Hall took the Stonyhurst entrance exams, which were internally set.[_citation needed_]

Notable Alumni:

Superiors 1856 George Lambert SJ 1857 George Tickell SJ 1858 John Laurenson 1865 Francis Brownbill SJ 1869 Matthew Newsham SJ 1875 Walter Bridge SJ 1876 Francis Cassidy SJ 1878 William Kerr SJ 1880 Francis Scholes SJ 1882 William Burns SJ 1884 Charles Clarke SJ 1885 Francis Cassidy SJ 1916 Edward King SJ 1916 Walter Weld SJ 1925 Aloysius Parkinson SJ 1927 Leo Belton SJ 1939 Hubert McEvoy SJ 1942-9 Walter Weld SJ Ministers 1949 Oswald Fishwick SJ 1959 John Firth SJ Headmasters 1965 Denis Unsworth 1968 Mr. Earle 1970 Rob Sinclair 1971 John Mallinson Ministers 1946 Dermot Whyte SJ 1948 Philip Prime SJ 1954 William Maher SJ 1959 Anthony Powell SJ Headmasters 1965 R Vaughan Rigby OS 1968 Rae Carter 1978 Peter Anwyl 1990 Rory O'Brien 1999 Michael Higgins 2004 Laurence Crouch 2014 Ian Murphy 2022 Fr Christopher Cann
  1. ^ a b "HODDER PLACE, Aighton, Bailey and Chaigley - 1147035 | Historic England". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  2. ^ a b "History" (PDF). Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  3. ^ Courtney, Francis (1963). "English Jesuit Colleges in the Low Countries 1593-1794". The Heythrop Journal. 4 (3): 254–263. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2265.1963.tb00316.x. ISSN 1468-2265.
  4. ^ TE Muir, Stonyhurst second edition 2006, p.195
  5. ^ a b "School gets a Tolkien touch". Lancashire Telegraph. 3 October 2003. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  6. ^ a b "Fears over restructuring plans at prestigious school". Lancashire Telegraph. 25 May 2024. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  7. ^ "The Adrian Aylward Award - The Stonyhurst Foundation". www.stonyhurstfoundation.org. 16 March 2023. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  8. ^ "School building award". Lancashire Telegraph. 5 July 2004. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  9. ^ "Men for Others". onlineministries.creighton.edu. Retrieved 30 May 2017.
  10. ^ "Stonyhurst on Tatler Address Book". Tatler Address Book. Retrieved 26 January 2025.
  11. ^ "Meet the real Winslow Boy". Lancashire Telegraph. 24 November 1999. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  12. ^ "Biography - The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia". www.arthur-conan-doyle.com. Retrieved 29 January 2025.
  13. ^ "World Cup hero Will's close shave with fame". Lancashire Telegraph. 12 December 2007.