History of Stonyhurst College

Stonyhurst College as a school dates back to 1593 when its antecedent, the Jesuit College at St Omer, was founded in Flanders to educate English Catholics. The history of the present school buildings dates as far back as 1200 AD.

Stonyhurst Hall

The earliest deed concerning the "Stanihurst" dates from 1200 AD and can now be found in the Arundell Library in the college, whilst the earliest evidence of a building on the site is from 1372 when John de Bayley was licensed to have an oratory there; the archway in the Bayley Room, within the 'Blind Tower', is believed to date from the fourteenth century, and may well be the only remnant of that earlier building. The oldest portion of the extant buildings however, the Shireburn Mansion (Stonyhurst Hall), was founded by the Roman Catholic, Richard Shireburn, a descendant of the Bayley family, whose son attended the College at St Omer. He built the gatehouse and open cupolas (known as "the towers") on top of an older settlement dating from 1592. The design of the gatehouse incorporates four of the classical orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite). Three similar designs appear on the buildings of Merton and Wadham College in Oxford, though those at Stonyhurs antedates them all by more than a decade. In places the exterior walls of this part of the building are as much as 6 feet (1.8 m) thick.

In 1648, during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell's army encamped near the hall on their way to the Battle of Preston. Cromwell spent the night at Stonyhurst and is reputed to have slept on a table, in the middle of the Great Hall, in full armour. He is said to have preferred this option to a bed because of fear of assassination and mistrust of his Catholic, royalist hosts.