Prior Park College

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Prior Park College

History
Motto	Deo Duce Deo Luce
Established	1830
Founder	Congregation of Christian Brothers
People
Headmaster	Dr. Giles Mercer KSG, FRSA
Chairman	Sister Jane Livesey CJ, MA
Chaplain	Father Malcolm Smeaton
Miscellaneous
School type	Independent
Location	Bath, Somerset, UK
Affiliations	Prior Park Preparatory School The Paragon School
Enrollment	circa. 550 students
Colours	Steel Blue and Sky Blue
Links
Homepage of College	Prior Park College
Homepage of Affiliated Schools	Prior Park Schools

Prior Park College is a Catholic co-educational boarding school with a fascinating heritage. It is situated on one of the seven hills surrounding the World Heritage City of Bath, England, of which it has a stunning view, over the adjoining 57 acre Prior Park Landscape Garden, once part of the school site and now owned by the National Trust. According to Queen Mary, the view from Prior Park was the second most beautiful in all of Europe, surpassed only by the vista of Florence from Fiesole.

1 Overview
2 History
- 2.1 Notable Alumni
3 Fees & Scholarships
4 Houses
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Overview

Founded in 1830 Prior Park has been co-educational for well over 20 years supporting a boarding and day community in Catholic tradition, ecumenical in spirit, being the largest fully co-educational Catholic Independent boarding and day school in Britain.

The college is affiliated with Prior Park Preparatory School which is located in Cricklade, Wiltshire and as of 2006 The Paragon School, Bath.

In 2006 pupils achieved 66% A & B grades with almost a quarter of the year group gaining 3 or more A grades at A-Level. At GCSE 56% of all grades were at A* & A with over a third of pupils gaining 9 or more A* & A grades.

[edit] History

The site was originally created by Ralph Allen, who ran the Bath post and owned the quarry from which Bath Sandstone was taken. He build Prior Park as an advertisement to people of Bath so that they could see how great the bath sandstone was, as many doubted its strength. He invited the architect John Wood to design him a building that would do this

For the last 180 years though the school has remained a Catholic school originally run by Irish Christian Brothers (the Congregation of Christian Brothers).

Recent developments in the last 2 years have included a major refurbishment of the indoor swimming pool, a new ICT centre, classroom extension and the new Mackintosh dance Studio which opened in September 2006.

[edit] Notable Alumni

Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster
Sir Cameron Mackintosh a successful British theatrical producer
Chris de Souza, author
Hugh Scully, broadcaster
Samuel Charles Stopp, politician & comedian

[edit] Fees & Scholarships

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Boarding 13-18 - £6,706 Per Term, £20,118 Per Annum
Day 13+ - £3,719 Per Term, £11,157 Per Annum
Day 11-13 - £3,338 Per Term, £10,014 Per Annum
Unlike some schools our fees include lunch for day pupils and supervised prep.
A range of Academic, Art, Drama, Music and All-Rounder Scholarships, as well as Sporting Excellence Awards are available. The value of the awards varies but is up to a maximum value of 50% of the fee. Awards above 30% are extremely rare.

[edit] Houses

Within the school, there are four houses for boys and three for girls; three of which are boarding and four are for day-pupils.
Boarding houses are Allen and Roche for boys, and St. Mary's for girls.
Day houses are Clifford and Burton for boys, and Fielding and English for girls.
One further house, Baines accomodates all students in the years seven and eight.