Schools and Education

St Edmund's College

Old Hall Green

St Edmund's (Roman Catholic Training) College, Old Hall Green
Bedford Series Postcard, No 764, early divided back format suggest circa 1904

About five miles from Ware, on the Cambridge road, in this parish, is St. Edmund's College, established for the education of the sons of the English nobility, clergy, and gentry, of the Roman Catholic religion. The building was erected in 1795, under the direction of Mr. James Taylor, architect, and consists of a range of buildings four stories high, and, with its two wings, three hundred feet long; more than eighty students can be conveniently accommodated. The course of education is commercial, classical, and theological: the institution is under the management of a president and vice-president, and there are eight professors and masters. The usual period for continuing at college is twelve years; the first seven are devoted to history, the mathematics, the ancient and modern languages, &c., and the remaining five are appropriated to logic, metaphysics, theology, and divinity. The occasion of founding this institution was the expulsion of the English Roman Catholics from their college in Douay, at the commencement of the French Revolution. 

Standon Entry in Topographical Dictionary of England 1831

Talbot and Challoner House, St Edmund's College

The college still operates as a Catholic school, and there is a St Edmunds College web page, but at the time of writing this contains little to interest the local or family historian.

St Hughs Preparatory School, St Edmunds College

There is a web page for Standon and Ware

If you can add to the information given above tell me.

Page update September 2005