A Brief Look at the Long and Storied History of Stonyhurst College

The history of the Jesuit school of Stonyhurst College, situated near Hurst Green in the Ribble valley, is complex and long, stretching back as far as 1593. The imposing, 300ft long main Campus of the college sits in a landscaped 300-acre estate which was first owned by the Weld family who offered it as a temporary refuge to the religious order of the Jesuits when they were pursued from their original home at Liege, in what is now Belgium, in 1762 by King Louise the Fifteenth of France.

In the three hundred odd years since then, the College has educated boys (and now girls) from all over the world, and has become one of the world’s most prestigious private schools, with tuition beginning at £40,000 per year. Some of the reasons the tuition fees are so high are the college’s Unique Selling Points, as there are few, if any, places which have a background as impressive.

Famous graduates

One of the college’s most famous graduates was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who located part of the Hound of the Baskerville’s here and possibly based Consulting Detective Sherlock Holme’s Arch-nemesis Moriarty on his contemporaries.

Another was the son of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who is best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the rings, who is thought to have got his inspiration for the ‘Shire’ and Hobbiton from the surrounding countryside when he was visiting, around which the ‘Tolkein trail’ will now take you.

Ancient relics

Artifacts and relics kept inside the college include an Oak table upon which Oliver Cromwell once slept, fully clad in his suit of armour, fearful of Catholic retribution after all but destroying a nearby bridge, now called ‘Cromwell’s Bridge’ in his sacking of the Ribble valley before going on to fight the royalists at Preston.

Another, rather gruesome, relic is a fragment of the skull of the former Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett. A prayer book that once belonged to Mary Queen of the Scots is kept in a temperature and humidity controlled glass case here, as are many other ancient manuscripts.

As the college has so many stories to tell i’ll certainly be revisiting it in the future, maybe delving into the history of the college’s famous observatory, the ancient collection of relics, other ‘Old Stonyhursts’ or the mysterious crosses dotted around the grounds.

A B-H