History
Monks from the monastery of St Gregory’s, Douai, in Flanders, came to Downside in 1814. In 1607, St Gregory’s was the first house after the Reformation to begin conventual life with a handful of exiled Englishmen. For nearly 200 years St Gregory’s trained monks for the English mission and six of these men were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. Two of these monks, SS John Roberts and Ambrose Barlow, were among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
Imprisoned then driven from France at the Revolution, the community remained at Acton Burnell in Shropshire for 20 years before finally settling in Somerset in 1814. The Monastery was completed in 1876 and the Abbey Church in 1925, being raised to the rank of a minor basilica in 1935 by Pius XI.
Attached to the Monastery, the School provides a Catholic boarding education for boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 18 years. During the 19th century Downside remained a small monastic school. It was Dom Leander Ramsay who founded the modern Downside and planned the new buildings that opened in 1912 and now form two sides of the 'Quad'.
The 20th century brought about changes for Downside in the expansion of the school buildings and school numbers — over 600 boys at one point. Over the decades the number of pupils had been falling but development drives and renewed demand for boarding education has seen numbers rise.
As part of the renewal, girls were admitted in 2004. Since then, numbers of both boys and girls have been increasing every year. Since the opening of Isabella House in 2007, approximately 65% of the pupils are boys and 35% are girls.
Read more about this topic: Downside School
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