Mount St Mary's College
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses: see Mount St. Mary's (disambiguation).
Mount St. Mary's College is a private (fee paying) English coeducational boarding school situated at Spinkhill near Sheffield. It is known colloquially as 'the Mount'. It was founded in its current form in 1842 by Fr Randall Lythgoe, the Provincial of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic religious order commonly known as the Jesuits. The school was linked to the Society of Jesus until September 2006. The school is now no longer one of nine schools in Britain for which the Jesuits are responsible.
The pupils range in age from 11 to 18, educated from 3rd year to Upper 6. Each of these years are named after different stages of langauge skills : starting at Rudiments (3rd year), to Grammar, Syntax, Poetry and Rhethoric (Upper 6). The school is the senior school to Barlborough Hall School, and the schools are closely linked.
During the 19th century the school was popular with prominent British Roman Catholic families, this position has now been assumed by Ampleforth College and Stonyhurst College.
The school sports an excellent rugby team and has had some of its older students joining the England Rugby teams and playing against Scotland, Italy and many other countries. The school also does exchanges with Notre Dame St Sigisbert in Nancy, France as well as Joan 23 which is located in Barcelona, Spain.
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[edit] History
The original College buildings were designed in 1840 by Joseph Hansom who also designed the Hansom cab. The girls quarters known as the Hopkins wing were built ten years later and are named after the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who once taught at the school. The school was a boys only school until 1970's, when girls were admitted as day students. Girl boarders started in 1984, and remained until today.
The block today known as New College was built between 1876 and 1912.
The school chapel, designed by Adrian Gilbert Scott was completed in 1924 as a memorial to those former pupils killed in World War I. In the atrium to the Chapel can be seen more than 100 names of former pupils of the school killed in the Second Boer War, World War I and World War II.
[edit] The move-away from the Society of Jesus
In September 2006, the constitution of the College and its preparatory school, Barlborough Hall changed to that of a charitable company called "Mount St. Mary's" whose board of Trustees comprises the present governing body. The Society of Jesus formally transferred to Mount St. Mary's property of the schools, their capita, business and other assets, so that, from a legal point of view, the schools are independent of the Society of Jesus.
