History
1615–1818
The monastic community was founded in Paris in 1615 and moved to Douai after the French Revolution taking over the former buildings of the community of St Gregory. The monastery provided educational opportunities from the beginning, but had no formal school in its first decades of existence. A boarding school later emerged in a dependent priory at La Celle.
1818–1903
Following the move to Douai in 1818, and the refoundation of the community by Richard Marsh, a more recognisable school emerged and by 1823, there were 28 boys on the roll. Around that time, the fees for students were being advertised at £32 a year or £30 for church students. [1] Links with the Roman Catholic dioceses in England were crucial to the school's survival. In the 1880s the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham was sending seven boys a year to the school. [2] Rather than the vertical house system of English schools, Douai retained the horizontal divisions of 'Rhetoric', 'Poetry', 'Grammar' and 'Syntax' throughout the nineteenth century, and even for a time in its new home in England. [3]
1903–1999
The modern school in Woolhampton, Berkshire was formed by the site's pre-existing St Mary's College's merging with the school of the incoming Benedictine community that moved from Douai in June 1903 as a result of Waldeck-Rousseau's Law of Associations (1901). Former pupils lobbied the Irish Parliamentary Party to raise the matter of the expulsion in Parliament. However it was Roman Catholic English Conservatives who espoused the cause: Lord Edmund Talbot in the House of Commons and 11th Lord Herries of Terregles in the House of Lords. [4]
The merger produced a school of 109 boy boarders, which had fallen to only 63 by 1911. Its long history in France and its monastic influence meant that Douai, although an independent boarding school, had in large part escaped the influence of the public school ethos that had developed in 19th-century England. However, in 1920, Douai was admitted to membership of the Headmasters' Conference. In the 1930s David Matthew, later Apostolic Delegate for Africa, congratulated the headmaster, Ignatius Rice, on the fact that: "no Catholic school has been so free from the influence of Arnold of Rugby as Douai has been." [5]
Day boys were admitted from the early 1960s, when annual boarding fees were £360. [6] By 1984, there was a record number of 333 pupils. The school became co-educational in 1993. After several years of financial difficulty, exacerbated by rumours of abuse, it closed in 1999 [7] .
post closure
In November 2017 a former House Master at Douai, Father Michael Creagh, was sentenced at Reading Crown Court after pleading guilty [8] to two counts of child abuse offences which were committed while he was at the Boarding School.
Buildings
In 1786 the Earl of Fingall, the squire of Woolhampton sold his Woolhampton estate and moved to Ireland. His family had been recusant Roman Catholics and had maintained a chapel and chaplain at Woolhampton House (now Elstree School). On leaving the neighbourhood he left his chaplain to minister to the local Roman Catholics and endowed him with some 7 acres (28,000 m2) of lands and some cottages. Three of these cottages stood on the site of the entrance tower, and in one of these, Woolhampton Lodge, the priest lived and had a chapel.
The oldest part of the current buildings date from around 1830. The main entrance and tower were constructed in 1888 in the Tudor Gothic style; the architect was Frederick Walters. In 1829 Fr Stephen Dambrine was appointed to Woolhampton. He embarked on a building programme which included a chapel in the Gothic style opened in 1833 to replace the chapel in Woolhampton Lodge, and which itself was replaced by the present St Mary's in 1848.
The cricket pavilion was built in 1922 to honour the 56 Old Boys of both Douai and St Mary's College who were killed in the First World War.
In the early years at Woolhampton, the school was seen as an appendage to the monastery and it was only with the foundation of a separate abbey church in the 1930s and the creation of distinct school and monastic refectories in 1944 that a degree of separation emerged. The Monastery was greatly expanded in the 1960s with the building of the new monastery designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd.
Haydock Hall, the study hall, was briefly converted into a film set for the shooting of the dormitory scenes in the 1990 film Three Men and a Little Lady . [10] [11] The former school buildings were also used as a location for the 2002 television film of Goodbye, Mr. Chips . [12]
After the closure of the School, the site was developed by Bewley Homes. The theatre block, swimming pool, science laboratories and Ditcham house were demolished, and were replaced by new housing. The main school buildings were redeveloped as private housing.
The gatehouse, hall and three blocks of buildings are grade II* listed. [13] [14]
In July 2017, a clubhouse for Old Boys and a museum was opened on the site of the former cricket pavilion. [15]
Sport
Association football was introduced to the "old" school in the late 1880s. Before this, football was played to particular rules which allowed the use of hands and forbade any kicking backwards. Cricket had been played for many years in the old quad, but in 1885 a new pitch was laid at Douai's country house in Planques. [19]
External fixtures, which were unknown at old Douai, were soon organized after the move to England. Cricket and hockey were played at the new school from 1905, and from 1918 to 1919 rugby union replaced soccer as the main winter sport (soccer returned as a minor sport in 1962). In 1920, the Trinidadian Louis Wharton became Douai's first Oxford University cricketer, having won a Blue for soccer the previous year. [20] He went on to play cricket for Somerset. [21] After the war the Surrey all-rounder Alan Peach was cricket coach, succeeded by Frank Shipston of Nottinghamshire. An indoor swimming pool was built in 1937.
A group of spectators (at Twickenham) associated with the school is credited with introducing the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot as an English rugby union anthem. [22] [23] [24]
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