Stonyhurst is a remarkable establishment, in both architectural and other ways. It is physically situated in remote Lancashire countryside to the east of Clitheroe between the rivers Ribble and Hodder. The land had been owned by the Shireburn family since the early 14th century. Sir Richard Shireburn (1522-94) was a successful Catholic Elizabethan follower of the Stanley family and started to build a substantial house at Stonyhurst in the late 16th century. He was responsible for the great gatehouse and southern façade. His work was continued by his grandson Nicholas. The last Shireburn was the autocratic Mary, the wife of the 8th Duke of Norfolk. She died in 1754 and the estate was inherited by her cousin Edward Weld of Lulworth.
The Society of Jesus was founded by St Ignatius Loyola and formally approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. The first Jesuit mission to England was initiated by the convert Fathers Robert Persons and Edmund Campion in 1581. Twelve years later the former obtained a grant from Philip II of Spain to set up a school to educate Catholic English boys at Saint-Omer, then situated in the Spanish Netherlands. The school broadly flourished there until the second half of the 18th century. In 1762, following the (temporary) suppression of the Jesuits, it migrated to Bruges and 12 years later to Liège. In 1794, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the decision was necessarily taken to remove to England and the then owner of Stonyhurst, Thomas Weld, whose lands were mainly in Dorset, offered his surplus estate in the north to the Jesuits as a school.
The school prospered and numbers increased in 1812 to 225, and more subsequently. In 1814 Pope Pius VII restored the Society of Jesus throughout the world. The school has continued to thrive until the present day. It has had many distinguished alumni including the poet laureate Alfred Austin, the industrialist Joseph Cyril Bamford, Sir Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oliver St John Gogarty, Paul Johnson, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan and the naturalist Charles Waterton. Even the current editor of the Catholic Herald spent part of his varied educational career there, following his father Sir Bill Cash MP. Seven VCs have been awarded to Stonyhurst boys. The convert poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) studied philosophy at St Mary’s Seminary, Stonyhurst from 1870 to 1874.
Stonyhurst remained the headquarters of the English Jesuit Province until the middle of the 19th century. The seminary itself was closed after the First World War. In 1967 the fairly brutal closure of Beaumont College, Old Windsor, left Stonyhurst as the major Jesuit public school. The first lay headmaster appointed was Dr Giles Mercer in 1989. Co-education was introduced in 1999. The Jesuits have increasingly withdrawn from direct involvement in the school, possibly because of a certain nervousness about being involved in anything as wicked as private education. The school is now run by a lay trust; the Society of Jesus appoints four trustees and the school is managed by a board of directors. The chaplain and parish priest is currently Father Tim Curtis SJ but there is no certainty this situation will prevail in the future. Since 2016 the headmaster has been John Browne, previously deputy headmaster of Ampleforth College. The school currently has some 550 pupils and is full, a situation probably envied by other Catholic boarding schools.
Since the early 19th century, the Society of Jesus has endowed Stonyhurst with a number of ecclesiastical buildings, the principal one being St Peter’s Church. This was erected in 1832-35 from designs by JJ Scoles. It was one of the earliest prominent Catholic churches to be erected after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and is an expression of Catholic confidence following Emancipation. Its late Perpendicular design is loosely based on that of King’s College, Cambridge. The building is faced in buff sandstone ashlar. The west front is framed by octagonal stair turrets topped with traceried cupolas with a five-light Perpendicular-style window. There is a richly moulded Tudor doorway beneath it.
The building was consecrated by Bishop John Briggs, Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the Northern District, on 23 June 1835.
The interior combines sanctuary and nave under one roof. The seven-bay nave arcade has clustered columns. The church is dominated by a richly carved white stone high altar of 1893 with grey, brown and yellow marble by Edmund Kirby, fortunately unwrecked. The church is of significance for the quality of its various fittings. The side chapels have carved and gilded screens. Various 19th-century statues of saints are by Mayer of Munich. There is a good collection of stained glass including some in the aisle windows designed by AWN Pugin and executed by Hardman. The church was reordered in the 1950s under the safe direction of HS Goodhart-Rendel who was responsible for the lavish polychrome painted and stencilled decoration.
Stonyhurst also possesses two other chapels of considerable quality. The beautiful narrow Sodality Chapel of Our Lady was designed by the convert architect Charles Alban Buckler and completed in 1859. It was enlarged by him 40 years later. It is dominated by the statue of Our Lady above the altar by Thomas Earle. Its striking gilded rood has been recently restored and a gilded feretory contains relics of St Gordianus (died 362). The Boys’ Chapel of 1888 is by Dunn and Hansom and is notable for its richly carved oak furnishings.
Stonyhurst is also the centre of a remarkable collection of artefacts which goes back to 1609. The curator for the last 20-odd years has been Dr Jan Graffius. Since 2017 a formal museum has been set up, accessible to the public through pre-booking on certain Fridays and Saturdays in the school holidays at £7 a head.
The collection is centred in the 19th-century Arundell Library and originated with the generous bequest of the 11th Lord Arundell of Wardour, an old boy, in 1837. It contains, inter alia, Queen Mary’s Book of hours, said to have been given by Mary Queen of Scots to her chaplain on the scaffold, the letters of St Edmund Campion and a first folio of Shakespeare.
It is not possible to give a full indication of the riches to be found in the museum; not all of these can be shown at any one time. However such items as the skull of Cardinal John Morton (of “Fork” fame), Cardinal Wolsey’s Book of Hours, the relic of the Holy Thorn, an enormous solid silver jewel-encrusted monstrance, numerous paintings and a huge collection of beautiful chasubles can usually be inspected.
Most of the exhibits have been made over to the college. One exception is the great Henry VII cope bequeathed by him to Westminster Abbey and borrowed by his son to be worn at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. This still belongs to the Society of Jesus. It is to be hoped that it will continue to be shown at Stonyhurst.
There is no doubt that Stonyhurst will be a major lender to the great Catholic exhibition planned for 2029, the 200th anniversary of Catholic Emancipation.
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