St Mary's College, Sefton
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St Mary's College is an independent Roman Catholic day school for boys and girls aged 11-18. It is one of three Irish Christian Brothers schools in England, all of which are now administered by laypersons (St. Mary's; St. Edward's College, Liverpool; and St. Anselm's College, Birkenhead).
[edit] Location and buildings
Based on Everest Road in the district of Crosby, Sefton, it also uses buildings that were formerly the American Consulate in Liverpool. A preparatory school, The Mount, is located a short distance away. The school was originally single-sex, taking boys only, but it began to take girls into its sixth form in 1982 and became fully co-educational in 1991.
St Mary's College has its own multigym and sports hall, which is open for public use as well as to the students. There are seven laboratories, two workshops, an extensive library. Also in 2005 a new Sixth Form Center was built to be used as a common room for all sixthformers.
[edit] Founding
The school was founded by the Christian Brothers (an Irish religious order founded in 1802 by Edmund Ignatius Rice). Schools such as St. Mary's were founded to ensure that Catholics in England did not lose the beliefs and morals with which they were raised, in an overwhelmingly Protestant country.
Relatively few Christian Brothers remain in the United Kingdom but they effectively carried out their mission, given the calibre of some of their more famous alumni.
[edit] Famous alumni
- Sir John Birt, erstwhile Director General of the BBC and advisor to the Blair administration
- Mark Gardiner, BBC Weakest Link winner & TV quiz show regular
- Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC
- Roger McGough, poet, playwright, broadcaster and children's author
- Professor David Crystal OBE, broadcaster and professor of linguistics
- Laurie Taylor, broadcaster and sociologist, thought to be the model for Howard Kirk in Malcolm Bradbury's novel The History Man
- Sir Ivor Roberts KCMG, HM Ambassador to Rome
- Kevin McNamara, veteran Labour MP
- Rt Rev Vincent Nichols, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham
- Rt Rev John Rawsthorne, Roman Catholic Bishop of Hallam
- Father Austin Smith, British proponent of the Passionist Fathers
- Mike Carr, Labour MP for Bootle, May-July 1990
- Chris Curtis, drummer with 1960s pop group The Searchers
- Francis George MacLardy - WW2 traitor, District Secretary of the British Union of Fascists, and member of the Waffen-SS British Free Corps, then Waffen-SS Medical Corps.
The school maintains strong links to the local community and the wider Roman Catholic community in England, Ireland, and overseas.
The college had an alumni association, St. Mary's Old Boys' Club, until 1999, when links were severed due to a scandal and resulting court case, Stringer v. Usher, Smith, Flanagan and Fleming.
