St Edwards School Calvary

St Edwards School was founded in 1863 at New Inn Hall Street in central Oxford by the Revd Thomas Chamberlain, Senior Student (Fellow) of Christ Church Oxford and Vicar of St Thomas’s Church near the railway station. It was one of a number of schools founded by Chamberlain, a passionate adherent of the Oxford Movement, the great Anglo-Catholic revival of the middle of the nineteenth century, and the only one to survive.

It was soon realised that the School could not grow and expand on its central Oxford site, and in 1873 moved to the current Summertown site on the Woodstock Road.

The School grew under the leadership of Algernon Barrington Simeon, whose “dream” was to construct a collection of monastic-style buildings around a central Quad, the second largest Quad in Oxford after Christ Church.

The first World War had a profound impact, and the School is proud that more boys pro rata went to serve their country than any other independent school in the country. The names of those who gave their lives are recorded and commemorated on the walls of the Chapel.

The School flourished under the Wardenship of Henry Kendall from 1925 until 1954.

The Second World War again had a huge impact of the School. Four RAF heroes, Guy Gibson VC, who led the Dambusters Raids, Douglas Bader (‘Reach for the Sky’), Adrian Warburton (photo-reconnaissance and the “uncrowned king of Malta”) and Arthur Banks GC are all OSE. Indeed the School was presented with a stained glass window by the RAF at the end of the War in recognition of “the superb contribution to the war effort made by former pupils of the School”.

In 1982 the first girl joined the School in the Lower Sixth and the School became fully co-educational in 1997.

‘Currently there are 781 (March 23) pupils in the School, of whom 40% are girls and 60% are boys. 85% of pupils board. The academic standard is high while the School has a huge extra-curricular programme of sport and music and drama, of which it is very proud, and which gives all pupils the broadest education possible, and which seeks to help each one realise his or her potential.

This text is by kind permission of the OSE Society.