The Jesuits originally arrived in Oxford in 1793 when they opened a small chapel dedicated to St Ignatius in St Clements. They surrendered responsibility for the mission to the Diocese of Birmingham in 1859 but were asked to take it over again in 1871. This they duly did and built the Church of St Aloysius in the Woodstock Road between 1873 and 1875 on land given by Lord Bute. The architect was Joseph Aloysius Hansom and the mission continued until 1981 when the Jesuits withdrew. (Fr Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, who had been an undergraduate at Balliol, was associated with the Mission in the 1870s.) After a period in the hands of diocesan clergy the Birmingham Oratorians took over the church in 1990, and hopefully it will now remain in their solicitous care until the end of time.
Oxford University was an Anglican preserve for the centuries following the Reformation. However, the university statute De Aulis Privatis of 1854 allowed the opening of private halls after a licence was obtained to do so. In 1871 the Universities Tests Act opened all university degrees and positions to men who were not members of the Church of England. The Jesuit-educated Francis Fortescue Urquhart (known as “Sligger” – the Sleek One) became the first Catholic since the Reformation to become a tutorial fellow at an Oxford College – at Balliol in 1895 (a year before the English Hierarchy allowed Catholic undergraduates actually to attend Oxford and Cambridge universities) as a lecturer in history, and a fellow a year later.
It also now became possible for Catholics to open private halls. The Society of Jesus was the first Catholic body to open such a hall, followed by the Benedictines (St Benet’s Hall, 1897), the Franciscans (Greyfriars, 1957) and the Dominicans (Blackfriars, 1994).
The convention originally was that such private halls had to be founded by an Oxford MA aged at least 28. The first master was Fr Richard Clarke SJ, a graduate of St John’s College. He converted to Rome in 1869 and became a Jesuit. Clarke’s Hall was initially set up at 11 St Giles and expanded into various adjacent houses. Clarke’s Hall became in turn Pope’s Hall and Plater’s Hall.
In 1918 a statute was passed allowing the vice-chancellor to grant licences to permanent private halls for students on condition that provision was made for their permanent governance and that they should be non-profit making. The Hall met these conditions and was thus able to take a permanent name.
That of St Edmund Campion SJ (1540-81) was chosen. A Protestant graduate of St John’s College, Oxford, he gradually became convinced of the truth of Catholicism. He walked to Rome from Douai following his conversion to join the recently founded Jesuit order. After a period in Prague, where he was ordained priest, he was sent on the English mission in 1580. From his secret press at Stonor Park in Oxfordshire he printed his Decem Rationes attacking the claims and validity of the Church of England. He was finally captured near Oxford in August 1581. After being tortured in the Tower of London he was tried there. He reminded the court that “In condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that once was the glory of England – the island of saints and the most devoted child of the See of St Peter.” He was condemned to death and hung, drawn and quartered in London on December 1, 1581.
The site in St Giles became increasingly cramped and could not expand since it was hemmed in on three sides by St John’s College. Fortunately Fr Martin D’Arcy SJ (1888-1976) was appointed Master in 1933 and became the Hall’s second founder; educated at Stonyhurst, he joined the Jesuits in 1907 and was ordained a priest in 1921. His love of the arts was pronounced. He immediately started looking around for a new site, identifying one opposite Christ Church in Brewer Street.
His friend Lady (Frances) Horner introduced him to the non-Catholic architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, known for his imaginative adaptation of traditional styles, and fresh from his design of New Delhi. Gavin Stamp described him as “surely the greatest British architect of the 20th (or of any other) century”. He had been commissioned in 1929 to build Liverpool Catholic Cathedral in a classical style but sadly, for financial reasons, only his crypt was ever built; this still survives.
Lutyens was keen to design an Oxford College building. The Brewer Street site was a long thin one, belonging to Hall’s Brewery, from whom it was purchased. The main existing building was the largely 18th-cent-ury Micklem Hall. Lutyens kept this intact and incorporated it into his L-shaped design, the rest being a long range of 17th-century Cotswold type in golden stone. The ground floor contained two long rooms, the Refectory and the Library. The first and second floor have single rooms arranged along a corridor. The garden is surprisingly large. The new College was complete by 1936.
The polygonal exterior of the east end of the Chapel is visible along Brewer Street, situated above a ground floor with two round arches. The Chapel has an apse, a huge wooden baldacchino, wooden pews and two-light windows. The memorable Stations of the Cross are by Sir Frank Brangwyn.
A side chapel was dedicated in the traditional way to Our Lady and Fr D’Arcy wished to beautify this. His friend Evelyn Waugh generously donated the royalties from his life of Edmund Campion (published 1935) to the project. After unsuccessful negotiations with Stanley Spencer, Charles Mahoney was appointed on the recommendation of Sir John Rothenstein to design a set of murals. The work, although ultimately unfinished, was gloriously achieved. The main panel shows Mary crowned as Queen of Heaven surrounded by a garland of flowers and angels spreading her protective cloak over four supplicants. The other two panels show a Nativity Scene in winter and the Coronation of Our Lady in summer. Other smaller panels depict the Flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, the birth of Mary, the Visitation to Elizabeth, the betrothal to Joseph and an unfinished Dormition.
Fr D’Arcy was also responsible for endowing Campion Hall with numerous remarkable works of art, both paintings and statuary. Some of the former are now in the Ashmolean Museum for reasons of security.
Fr D’Arcy moved to Farm Street in 1945 to become Provincial of the English Jesuits until 1950. His last years were clouded by the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council which was antipathetic to his traditional kind of Catholicism. He died in 1976.
The Chapel at Campion Hall was sadly neglected at this period with Mass in preference usually being celebrated in a less formal setting.
Under the supportive Masterships of Fr James Hanvey SJ and Fr Nick Austin SJ both Chapel and Lady Chapel have been restored to their former glory, chiefly by the good efforts of a series of Jesuit postgraduate sacristans. The sanctuary of the Chapel now benefits from a splendid picture of the Noli me tangere by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) on long loan from All Souls College; the Lutyens candlesticks have also been beautifully regilded.
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