On entry into the school, the children are placed into one of three Houses: Campion, Mayne or Southworth.
The House system encourages healthy competition and our merit system encourages children to aspire to high standards in their personal work and behaviour. Friendly inter-house competition is encouraged in sport, the performing arts and academics. The annual inter-house pancake race is a firm favourite event among the children!
Each House is ably led by a Captain and Vice-Captain, supported by Prefects. Their roles are to support the children at break times and to be excellent role models to others. One of their main roles is the promotion of the House’s chosen charity and to organise fundraising events, from cake sales to the wacky welly walk.
About our House Saints
Our three houses are dedicated to a particular Saint. They are part of the huge group known as the English Martyrs, men, women and children who were put to death, refusing to give up their faith beginning in the year 1535 until 1681, when the last Martyr was put to death at Tyburn (near Oxford Street in London).
St Edmund Campion was a clever young man, educated at Oxford University. There he made a great speech in front of Queen Elizabeth I, which she thought was wonderful. Soon after this he became a Catholic and joined an order called the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in Rome. He came back to England and using many disguises helped the Catholics; later he was arrested and was put to death on 1 December 1581.
St Cuthbert Mayne was born in the West Country, in Devon. He became a Clergyman in the Church of England, he later became a Catholic and went to The English College in Douay (in France) to study for the priesthood. After he was made a priest he came back to work in the part of England he knew best, the West. He worked for a year in Cornwall and then he was arrested because he was a priest and put to death in Launceston on 29 November 1577. He is important because he was the first priest from Douay College to be a Martyr. Douay College was later closed down and came to Old Hall Green in England and is now known as St Edmund’s College.
St John Southworth was born in Lancashire in the North of England in 1592. He also went to the English College in Douay and was made a priest. He managed to work for a long time in the centre of London, helping people in poverty. He was arrested and put to death at the age of 62, in London on 28 June 1654. However, the story doesn’t end there. Some of his friends managed to get hold of his body and they took it back to his old College in Douay where it was buried in the Chapel. When the College was shut down at the time of the French Revolution, his body was secretly taken and buried in the grounds. Nearly a hundred years later, thanks to some very good town planning, the people of Douay decided to build a road through what was the English College and it was then that his body was discovered and brought back to England in 1930, first to St Edmund’s and then to a final resting place in Westminster Cathedral in London.