page_title: St Bede's College, Manchester
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: St Bede's College, Manchester / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Image was cropped from an original obtained from https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/59648, where it was made available under a Creative Commons license by the photographer, Keith Williamson.
context_page_description: St Bede's College is an independent Roman Catholic co-educational school for children from 3–18 years on Alexandra Road South in Whalley Range, Manchester, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. Mrs Sandra Pike became Headmistress of the College in August 2020.
  Founded in 1876 by the Bishop of Salford, Herbert Vaughan, the College moved to its present site on Alexandra Park Road a few years later after the acquisition of the former Manchester Aquarium building. Shortly afterwards, work began on the Vaughan Building, the College's Grade One Listed building.
context_section_description: The original school was at 16 Devonshire Street, Grosvenor Square, off Oxford Road (then called Oxford Street) and was set up in 1876 by the then Bishop of Salford, Herbert Vaughan, later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Originally, the school was conceived as a "commercial school" to prepare the sons of Manchester Catholics for a life in business and the professions.
  This was the first school under the patronage of Saint Bede: possibly the name was chosen because the Cardinal's brother, a Benedictine and the Archbishop of Sydney, was Dom Bede Vaughan. In August 1877, the Manchester Aquarium on Alexandra Road South and the plot of land around it was purchased by the then Bishop Vaughan for College purposes. On 10 September 1877, St Bede's College re-opened in the Manchester Aquarium with 45 pupils who were taught by 11 staff, 8 of them priests. The faculty lived in 'Rose Lawn', until the accommodation levels were completed in the Vaughan Building, for both clergy and a large number of boarders. The somewhat spartan conditions were alleviated by a team of long-serving nuns, who took care of the domestic and catering requirements, as well as a number of lay staff.
  In the late 1870s and early 1880s, the Vaughan building was constructed (see pictures). The original plan was for a symmetrical building, with five-storey towers at each end. Only one half of this design was ever carried out, but the main ground floor corridor of the Vaughan building is an impressive centrepiece for the school all the same. An imposing entrance on Alexandra Road (decorated with ceramic mouldings by Tinworth) leads into a corridor adorned with mosaics and marble. The original aquarium building (now the school's Academic Hall) leads off the main corridor directly opposite the main entrance. Appropriately the decorative scheme includes plaster mouldings of fish and other marine animals.
  In 1891, Salford Catholic Grammar School (the Diocesan Junior seminary) amalgamated with the College which duly became the place where over 500 priests, some of whom later became bishops or archbishops, were educated.
  The College Chapel was built in 1898 and the Henshaw Building, named after the fifth Bishop of Salford, was opened around 1932. The Beck Building, named after the seventh Bishop of Salford George Andrew Beck, was opened in 1958 while the St Regis Building, built in the first decade of the 20th century as a retreat house for the Cenacle Convent, was bought by the College in 1970. It remained empty until 1984 when the Governors took the decision to make St Bede's co-educational. Over the next three years, the St Regis building was completely renovated and allowed the College roll to increase from 630 at the beginning of the 1980s to just under 1000 today.
  Between 1886 and 1896, the College had an affiliate school [a 'realgymnasium'] at Bonn, Germany, then a small town on the Rhine. It was never successful. British victims of the war are commemorated in the College Chapel.
  On a lighter note, small boys would scare each other with tales that the staircase up to the Masters' Library and the professors' rooms in the Vaughan Building was haunted by the ghost of an Edwardian schoolboy, Frank Bonney, who had fallen to his death.
  Several notable television series have been filmed in and around the College buildings. For example, it featured in Granada Television's The Jewel in the Crown and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Clocking Off  and as a location for the BAFTA award-winning series The Street.
  From the time of the school's move to Alexandra Road, the College supported the nearby St Bede's Mission, and priests on the school's staff worked to provide for the spiritual needs of the Catholic population in Whalley Range. In 1893 the Bishop of Salford, John Bilsborrow, appointed Father James Rowan, a former teacher at the college, as priest in charge of the district. The new English Martyrs Parish Church was consecrated on the Feast of the English Martyrs, 4 May 1922.
caption: The Vaughan building from Alexandra Road South
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