St Edmund's College, Ware
 |
|
| Motto |
Avita pro fide (Latin: For the faith of our fathers) |
|---|---|
| Established | 1568 |
| Type | Independent day and boarding |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| President | Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster |
| Headmaster | P Durán |
| Chair of the Board of Governors | P J Mitton |
| Location |
Old Hall Green Ware Hertfordshire SG11 1DS United Kingdom 
|
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Ages | 3–18 |
| Former pupils | Old Edmundians |
| Diocese | Westminster |
| Website | School website |
St Edmund's College is a coeducational independent day and boarding school in the British public school tradition set on 440 acres (1.8 km2) in Ware, Hertfordshire. Founded in 1568 as a seminary, then boys' school, it is the oldest continuously operating and oldest post-Reformation Catholic school in the country. Today it caters for boys and girls aged 3 to 18.
St. Edmund's College is a continuation on English soil of the English College that was founded by William Cardinal Allen at Douay in Flanders, France in 1568. Originally intended as a seminary to prepare priests to work in England to keep Catholicism alive, it soon also became a boys' school for Catholics, who were debarred from having such institutions in England. Many of its students, both priests and laymen, returned to England to be put to death under the anti-Catholic laws. The college includes amongst its former alumni 20 canonised and 138 beatified martyrs.
In the second half of the 17th century, a small Catholic school was begun in Hampshire. It was opened by a priest at Silkstead prior to 1662, and then transferred to Twyford, near Winchester. It was conducted in great secrecy, and was for boys of preparatory school age, intending to proceed to the English College to complete more advanced studies. The poet Alexander Pope was a student at this school, although he did not proceed to Douay. Twyford was closed in 1745 on account of anti-Catholic feeling caused by the Jacobite rebellion, but Bishop Richard Challoner re-established the school in Hertfordshire at Standon Lordship in 1749, in a property owned by the Aston family. In 1769, Bishop James Talbot moved the school to its current site at Old Hall Green, near Puckeridge, and it became known as Old Hall Green Academy.
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