Plater College

Plater College was an adult education establishment which was based in Headington, Oxford, England.

The college was founded in 1922 by the Rev. Leo O'Hea, S.J. (1881–1976), director of the Catholic Social Guild, in memory of the Father Charles Dominic Plater S.J., who had been instrumental in founding the Guild in 1909, giving the Catholic Social Movement its first organizational structure in England, and who had died in Malta the prior year. The College was originally called the Catholic Workers' College, and was located on Walton Well Road in Oxford where it remained until 1955, when it moved to Boars Hill. Under the leadership of Joseph Kirwan (1910–2005), who became principal in 1962, it was renamed Plater College in 1965, and moved from makeshift facilities at Boars Hill to a new purpose-built residential college on Pullens Lane in Headington during the late 1970s.

Plater College was home to the G. K. Chesterton Institute in the UK, and the G. K. Chesterton Library, and publisher of the literary journal, Second Spring.

Plater had a Catholic ethos with daily mass being said before the evening meal. St Joseph the Worker was the patron saint of the college, with a statue of the saint at the entrance. Students did not have to be Catholic to attend the college, but help was given to students by a resident priest and also a community of apostolic sisters who were affiliated with the college.

It offered further education with an emphasis on Catholic social teaching to students who had vocational qualifications, those who had entered into employment directly from school or some who had missed other educational opportunities. It was considered a sister-school to secular Ruskin College, on which it was modeled. Plater College members were Affiliate Members of the University and were eligible to take the University examinations for the Special Diploma in Social Studies and Special Diploma in Social Policy & Administration and were also eligible for Life Membership / Temporary Membership of the Oxford Union. The students were also enrolled to use the Bodleian Library. Lectures could be attended at certain Oxford colleges as well as The Schools.

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