Ampleforth College

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ampleforth College

Dieu le ward (French: "God the protector")
Established	1802
School type	Private, Catholic.
Headmaster	The Reverend Gabriel Everitt OSB, MA, DPhil
Location	Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, England
Colours	Red and Black
Website	Ampleforth College

Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire is the largest private Catholic mixed boarding school in the UK, and it is occasionally referred to as the "Catholic Eton", a sobriquet also attached at different times to Beaumont (no longer open) and Stonyhurst College (both Jesuit schools) and which was Cardinal Newman's aim in founding the Oratory School as an alternative to junior seminaries and monastic schools. It first opened in 1802 and is run by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey, the Community of St Laurence (a house within the English Benedictine Congregation), who trace their origins back nearly 1000 years to medieval Westminster.

Ampleforth Abbey

1 Overview
2 Press coverage
3 Daughter Abbeys
4 Notable Old Amplefordians
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Overview

The school's primary concern is to educate its pupils in the principles of the Catholic faith whilst providing a thorough and broad-based education. It is notable that its academic admissions policy isn't as academically exacting as that exercised by some other English public schools. As a result, the school is typically between 150 - 200 in the annual league tables of public examination results, although it was ranked 6th nationally in the 2004 "value added" table. The school's administration claims that by looking at the top 50% of candidates (those who would probably have been able to get into more selective schools had they wanted to) the school's teaching appears to score just as well as, if not better than, other famous English public schools. It maintains a strong scholarship set, with about 8% of pupils gaining the offer of a place at Oxford or Cambridge; over 90% go on to university.

There is a famous anecdote of Fr Paul Neville, the school's headmaster in the 1940s, boasting of record offers from Oxford to a prospective parent. "And what of those boys who don't go to Oxford?" replied the parent. "Oh, they run the companies that employ the boys who do," replied Fr Paul.

As a result of the school's association with the monks, religion is central to the life of the school. All pupils are expected to take religious education at GCSE level. Mass is attended by all pupils twice a week, once on a weekday in the house, and once on Sunday in the Abbey Church.

The school has an excellent choir, the Schola Cantorum, which sings at High Mass on Sunday and also at a choral Mass on Friday nights during term time. The choir has made various recordings, broadcasts and tours throughout the world. There is also now a girls choir, Schola Puellarum, which was recently noted in both newspaper and magazine. They sing a service every Friday, and they frequently join the boys singing high mass on Sunday. They recently went on a tour to Dublin, and sang in many of the well-known churches there.

Though originally only a boys' school, over recent years the school has moved from accepting day girls in the sixth form to the present situation with girls throughout the school.

The school is arranged into houses, with pupils living in the separate houses, eating together as a house and playing sport together as a house in inter-house competitions. There are currently ten houses, each named after a saint: St Aidan's, St Bede's, St Cuthbert's, St Dunstan's, St Edward-Wilfrid's, St Hugh's, St John's, St Oswald's, St Margaret's and St Thomas'. St Martin's Ampleforth is the Prep School for Ampleforth, situated a few miles across the valley in Gilling Castle.

Sport is a large part of school life, with pupils participating in a wide variety of sports including rugby, shooting, tennis, cricket and football. As well as many rugby and cricket pitches set in the 2000 acres (8 km²) of the valley, the school runs the St Alban's Centre (SAC), a sports centre with a large hall (also used for school assemblies and official ceremonies), a 25-metre swimming pool, three squash courts, and a fitness suite. SAC is also open to the general public for a fee.

St Thomas's House

The school also sports a large wall to the south of the Abbey, popularly known as "the Big Wall". It is approximately 10 m tall by 15 m wide and constructed from local sandstone. It was speculated that the wall was constructed to play an Amplefordian version of Fives; the exact nature of this game and its equipment was unearthed in a marginal doodle in a book in the monastic library by Dr Galliver, a school history master, in the 1990s. Nowadays it is often used by members of the school to brush up on their tennis skills, and by the cadet corps for drill.

The college is colloquially known as "SHAC": the popular explanation for this is that the acronym stands for "Senior House, Ampleforth College". although this is likely to be a backronym. It is believed that it was originally referred to as "the shack" in the early 20th Century because of the parlous state of the old school building at that time; the phrase was coined when the then head monitor welcomed the school "back to the old shack" one September. School monitors play an important role in the smooth running of the school and are known as "shackies" to all in the college.

The school is situated in a picturesque valley with many sports pitches, forests and lakes. There are three lakes remaining of the original five constructed by the Fairfax Family centuries ago. The middle lake is stocked with trout (mainly brown and rainbow, although the occasional blue back has been seen).

The current headmaster is Father Gabriel Everitt OSB, a convert from the Church of England.

[edit] Press coverage

Ampleforth and the Valley from the Air

As the leading Catholic school in the country, its occasional problems make the news - the school has suffered some poor press coverage during recent years including a story on the accusation that several monks and three members of the lay teaching staff molested the children under their care. ^[1] Around the same time, it was indicted as having taken part in a cartel of price fixing amongst public schools.^[2] The school has periodically experienced a drugs problem due to its location (and lack of nearby entertainment) and the relative affluence of the children who attend.^[3]

The school was the subject of a light-hearted ITV documentary made by director Dan Barraclough shown in 2003 and entitled Ampleforth: My Teacher's A Monk. The aim was to show off the school to a wider audience, although it also highlighted large-scale breaking of the school rules on smoking, and what some regard as the lax rules on alcohol. However he did report that he did not witness a single act of bullying, something that used to form the image of the stereotypical English public school.^[4] Recent pupils thought it was an accurate, if rather superficial, portrayal of the school.

In September 2005, Ampleforth was one of the leading British schools (including Charterhouse, Eton, Gresham's, Harrow, Haileybury, Marlborough, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Stowe, Wellington and Winchester) which were considered by the Office of Fair Trading to be operating a fee-fixing cartel in breach of the Competition Act of 1998. All of the schools were ordered to abandon this practice.

[edit] Daughter Abbeys

In 1955, at the invitation of prominent Roman Catholic laypersons in Saint Louis, Missouri, a group of Benedictines from Ampleforth established the Priory of Saints Mary and Louis and the corresponding Saint Louis Priory School in Saint Louis. The Priory became independent from Ampleforth College in 1973, and was elevated to abbey status, becoming the Saint Louis Abbey in 1989.

[edit] Notable Old Amplefordians

Thomas Burgess (1791–1854), Roman Catholic Bishop of Clifton, 1851–1854
John Polidori (1795–1821), physician and writer
Athansius Allanson (1804–1876), Benedictine monk, and Abbot of Glastonbury, 1874–1876
Don Agustín Jerónimo de Iturbide y Huarte (1807–1866), Prince Imperial of Mexico
Leonard Calderbank (1809–1864), Roman Catholic priest
Francis Salvin (1817–1904), falconer
Cuthbert Hedley (1837–1915), Roman Catholic Bishop of Newport, 1881–1915
Joseph Turner (1853–1897), composer and organist
Herbert Railton (1857–1910), illustrator
Roderic O'Conor (1860–1940), artist
Major-General Sir Freddie de Guingand (1900–1979), Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Montgomery, 1942–1945
Columba Cary-Elwes (1903–1994), monastery founder, ecumenist and author
Harman Grisewood (1906–1997), Chief Assistant to the Director-General of the BBC, 1955–1964
Anthony Ainscough (1906–1986), Prior of Ampleforth Abbey, 1961–1963
Gabriel Turville-Petre (1908–1978), Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, University of Oxford, 1953–1975
Brigadier Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat (1911–1995), commando officer
Colonel Sir David Stirling (1915–1990), founder of the SAS
Sir Hugh Fraser (1918–1984), Secretary of State for Air, 1962–1964
Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg (born 1921), Grand Duke of Luxembourg, 1964–2000
Auberon Herbert (1922–1974), campaigner for Eastern European causes
Sir John Johnston (1922–2006), Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain's Office
Basil Cardinal Hume (1923–1999), Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey, 1963–1975, and Archbishop of Westminster, 1975–1999
Neville Braybrooke (1923–2001), writer and editor
Vincent Cronin (born 1924), historical writer and biographer
Michael Nolan, Baron Nolan (1928–2007), Law Lord and first chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life
Andrew Bertie (born 1929), first British Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, 1988–
David Hennessy, 3rd Baron Windlesham (born 1932), Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords, 1973–1974
John Crichton-Stuart, 6th Marquess of Bute (1933–1993), Chairman, Historic Buildings Council for Scotland, 1983–1988, and National Museums of Scotland, 1985–1993
Henry Wansbrough (born 1934), Master of St Benet's Hall, Oxford, 1990–2004
Hugo Young (1938–2003), journalist
Andrew Knight (born 1939), journalist, editor, and media magnate
Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles (born 1939), soldier
Piers Paul Read (born 1941), writer
Michael Ancram, 14th Marquess of Lothian (born 1945), Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party, 2001–2005
Philip Lawrence (1947–1995), headmaster and murder victim
Red Morris, 4th Baron Killanin (born 1947), film producer
William Peel, 3rd Earl Peel (born 1947), Lord Chamberlain
Captain Robert Nairac (1948–1977), George Cross, intelligence officer murdered by the Irish Republican Army
John Home Robertson (born 1948), former Labour MP and currently Member of the Scottish Parliament
Julian Fellowes (born 1949), actor and writer
Antony Gormley (born 1950), sculptor
Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk (born 1956)
Edward Stourton (born 1957), journalist
Julian Wadham (born 1958), actor
Rupert Everett (born 1959), actor
Joe Simpson (born 1960), mountaineer and autobiographer
King Letsie III of Lesotho (born 1963)
William Dalrymple (born 1965), historian
Lawrence Dallaglio (born 1972), England rugby player
Jonathan Ryland (born 1973), actor
Tom Waller (born 1974), film producer
Simon Easterby (born 1975), Ireland rugby player