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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 The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...
(Jesuits). It is adjacent to Stonyhurst College, outside the small village of Hurst Green, near
Clitheroe Clitheroe () is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Ribble Valley, Borough of Ribble Valley, Lancashire, England; it is located north-west of Manchester. It is near the Forest of Bowland and is often used as a base for to ...
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. 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.


History


Jesuit College

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 Bruges ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders, in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is in the northwest of the country, and is the sixth most populous city in the country. The area of the whole city amoun ...
in 1762 and then
Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...
in 1773, due to the persecution of the
Jesuit The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
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 Boulogne-sur-Mer (; ; ; or ''Bononia''), often called just Boulogne (, ), is a coastal city in Hauts-de-France, Northern France. It is a Subprefectures in France, sub-prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Pas-de-Calais. Boul ...
, but this was abandoned and ultimately ended by the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762. 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. Thirteen years after the settlement in England, the preparatory school was established in 1807.


Hodder Place

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 The River Hodder is in Lancashire, England. It is a County Biological Heritage Site. It rises on White Hill and flows for approximately 23 miles to the River Ribble, of which it is the largest tributary. The Hodder drains much of the Fore ...
, Hodder Place. The latter opened as a Jesuit
novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...
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.


St Mary's Hall

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 Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Society of Jesus, Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame places him among the leading English poets. His Prosody (linguistics), prosody – notably his concept of sprung ...
trained as a priest there, and in the twentieth century John Tolkien, son of J.R.R. Tolkien, also trained there. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 2004, with the opening of Hodder House, the pre-school for 3-year-olds, was created. 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.


Religious life

St Mary's Hall is a
Catholic school Catholic schools are Parochial school, parochial pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest parochial schools, religious, no ...
, 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. 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


The playroom system

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


Lines

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: * Campion (Red) (after St Edmund Campion) * St Omers (Yellow, though some brown rugby shirts as yellow shows too much dirt) (after St Omer, the French town where the school was founded) * Shireburn (Green) (after the Shireburn family that built Stonyhurst Hall) * Weld (Blue) (after the Weld family that donated Stonyhurst) 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.


Academic

In Rudiments, pupils sit the Common Entrance and/or the 11+ Scholarship examinations in preparation for entry to the
college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary sc ...
. 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.


Alumni

Notable Alumni: * George Archer-Shee, (Hodder Place alumnus), cause célèbre, his case was the inspiration for the play ''
The Winslow Boy ''The Winslow Boy'' is an English play from 1946 by Terence Rattigan based on an incident involving George Archer-Shee in the Edwardian era. The incident took place at the Royal Naval College, Osborne. Background Set against the strict cod ...
'' by Terence Rattigan. * Patrick Baladi, actor. *
Iain Balshaw Iain Robert Balshaw, MBE (born 18 April 1979) is an English former rugby union player who played on the wing or at full back for Bath, Leeds Carnegie, Gloucester and Biarritz Olympique. He won 35 international caps for England between 2000 ...
, rugby player and Rugby World Cup winner. * Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Hodder Place alumnus), author of Sherlock Holmes. *
Will Greenwood William John Heaton Greenwood, Order of the British Empire, MBE (born 20 October 1972) is an English former rugby union player who played for Leicester Tigers and Harlequin F.C., Harlequins and was a member of England's 2003 Rugby World Cup, 20 ...
, rugby player (whose mother taught mathematics at the school until 2007). * Vyvyan Holland (Hodder Place alumnus), younger son of
Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
.


Headmasters


Hodder Place

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


St Mary's Hall

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


Exterior

File:St Mary's Hall, Stonyhurst 2018.jpg, School building in 2018 File:Lodge - geograph.org.uk - 105103.jpg, Entrance lodge to school Image:St Mary's Hall Stonyhurst.jpg, The school from across the sports pitches Image:Hodder sports pitch.jpg, The sports pitch at Hodder Place, 2003 Image:Memorial to Hodder pupil.jpg, Stonyhurst Park Cross Image:Hodder Place Stonyhurst.jpg, Hodder Place, former Jesuit novitiate and preparatory school


See also

* Stonyhurst Estate * College of St. Omer * List of Stonyhurst Alumni/ae * Charities of Stonyhurst College * St Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits * List of Jesuit sites in the United Kingdom * List of Jesuit schools


References


External links

* *
Virtual tour of the schoolProfile
on the ISC * Independent Schools Inspectorate Inspectio
Reports
{{Diocese of Salford Preparatory schools in Lancashire Stonyhurst College Educational institutions established in 1807 1807 establishments in England Roman Catholic private schools in the Diocese of Salford Catholic boarding schools in England Jesuit secondary schools in England Grade II listed buildings in Lancashire