Stonyhurst Saint Mary's Hall
 |
|
| Motto |
Quant Je Puis "All that I can" |
|---|---|
| Established | 1807 (as Hodder Place) 1946 (as Saint Mary's Hall) |
| Type | Independent day and boarding |
| Religion | Roman Catholic (Jesuit) |
| Headmaster | Ian Murphy |
| Location |
Clitheroe Lancashire BB7 9PU England Coordinates: 53°50′49″N 2°28′19″W / 53.847°N 2.472°W |
| DfE number | 888/6007 |
| DfE URN | 119825 Tables |
| Students | 240~ |
| Gender | Coeducational |
| Ages | 3–13 |
| Colours | Green, White |
| Lines | Campion, St Omers, Shireburn, Weld |
| Affiliated school | Stonyhurst College |
| Diocese | Salford |
| Patron saint | Blessed Virgin Mary |
| Website | saintmaryshall |
Stonyhurst St Mary's Hall (commonly known as S.M.H.) is the preparatory school to Stonyhurst College. It is an independent co-educational Catholic school founded by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). It is primarily a day school but has some boarders. As the lineal descendant of Hodder Place the school lays claim to be the oldest preparatory school in the country.
It is adjacent to Stonyhurst College, outside the small village of Hurst Green, near Clitheroe in Lancashire, England.
Stonyhurst College was founded in 1593 as the English Jesuit College at St Omers in present-day France at a time when Catholic education was prohibited by law in England. Having moved to Bruges in 1762 and then Liege in 1773, due to the persecution of the Jesuit order which ran the school, it finally settled at Stonyhurst in 1794. An attempt had been made to found a preparatory school to the College at St Omers, which would have been based in Boulogne, but this was abandoned and ultimately thwarted by the expulsion of the Jesuits from France in 1762. In 1768 new buildings were erected for a preparatory school at Bruges; this 'Little College' was closed in 1775, two years after the migration of the College to Liège. Thirteen years after the settlement in England the preparatory school was finally established in 1807.
The Stonyhurst Estate donated by an old boy of the College at St Omers, Thomas Weld, included the Shireburn family Hall and a large building on the edge of the River Hodder, Hodder Place. The latter opened as a Jesuit novitiate when the Jesuits were formally re-established in Britain in 1803. Four years later, preparatory, the youngest pupils in the school, which had settled in the Hall, were transferred to Hodder Place. It was not until 1855, however, that the preparatory school was formally opened. The building underwent extension in 1836 and again in 1869 when two towers were constructed on either side.
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