St Edmund's College & Prep School, Ware

St Edmund's College Ware is the oldest Roman Catholic school in England in continuous operation, founded in 1568 by Cardinal William Allen at Douai in northern France — at a time when the Elizabethan penal laws made it illegal to educate English Catholics in England itself. The Douai school was the principal seminary for English Catholic clergy throughout the Recusant period and produced the Douai-Rheims English translation of the Bible (1582-1610), the standard English Catholic Bible until the mid-twentieth century. The school relocated to England in 1793 following the seizure of the Douai property during the French Revolution, settling in 1793 at Old Hall Green, Ware, in Hertfordshire, where it has been ever since.

The school operates today on a 400-acre rural campus at Ware, including the Augustus Pugin chapel (consecrated 1853 — one of Pugin's masterpieces of Gothic Revival church architecture). St Edmund's became co-educational in stages and today educates around 791 pupils ages 3-18 with a substantial boarding population. The Headmaster is Matthew Mostyn. The school is a member of the HMC, the CISC and the Boarding Schools Association.

The school's most historically significant alumnus is Cardinal Henry Edward Manning — Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 to 1892 and the principal English Roman Catholic figure of the Victorian period. Manning converted to Roman Catholicism in 1851 during the Oxford Movement and rose rapidly through the Catholic Church to become Archbishop of Westminster. His friendship with the social reformer Frederick Ozanam and his interventions on the side of striking dock workers in the 1889 London Dock Strike established him as a major figure of the social-Catholicism tradition in England. Manning was created a Cardinal in 1875.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme via the St Edmund's College Foundation, intended to maintain the founders' principle of providing Catholic education to families regardless of family means.