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 unto 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 about 660 pupils in the School, of
whom two thirds are boys and about 80% are boarders. 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. |
