Stonyhurst College

Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic public school providing education for boarding and day pupils, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is based on the Stonyhurst Estate, next to the village of Hurst Green, in Lancashire, in the United Kingdom. It occupies a Grade I listed building. The school has been fully co-educational since 1999. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. A precursor institution of the college was founded in 1593 by Father Robert Persons SJ at St Omer, at a time when penal laws prohibited Catholic education in England. It relocated to Stonyhurst Hall in 1794, having moved already to Bruges in 1762 and Liège in 1773, after an old boy, Thomas Weld (of Lulworth), granted it the Stonyhurst estate. It provides boarding and day education to approximately 500 boys and girls aged 11–18. On an adjacent site, its preparatory school, St Mary's Hall, provides education for boys and girls aged 3–11. Its alumni/ae include three Saints, twelve Beati, twenty-two martyrs, seven archbishops, seven Victoria Cross winners, a Peruvian president and prime minister, a New Zealand Prime Minister, a signatory of the American Declaration of Independence and a number of writers, sportsmen, politicians, and European royals.