History of the College

Ratcliffe College was opened on Tuesday 1^st. June 1847, appropriately The Feast of Our Blessed Lady Help of Christians. The school started with only two pupils, John Foy from London and Joseph Roskill from Liverpool. They came to find a school building almost identical to the present front façade. Their arrival coincided with the opening of "A beautiful little Gothic Church" as described in an article in the Tablet, and which is now the Old Library.

The Rosminians – or – more correctly "the Institute of Charity" had been founded in 1828 by the saintly Antonio Rosmini and it was barely seven years after this that, in answer to several requests, the first missioners arrived in England to teach in the College and Seminary of Prior Park, near Bath, where they remained for several years. The best known of these men was Reverend Doctor Luigi Gentili. He was the first Catholic priest to preach publicly since the Reformation, and when he did so was stoned. He commenced his great missionary work in the little village of Shepshed near Grace Dieu where he became Chaplain to the de Lisle family. As men began to join the Order it soon became apparent that a Noviciate was needed and so land was purchased at Ratcliffe and plans were drawn up for a Noviciate and College. The latter at the urging of Gentili, who, with Rosmini, can be considered as the founders of the school.

The architect chosen was Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin who had designed the Palace of Westminster. Many of Pugin’s designs were far too grandiose and exceeded the amount the budget would allow. Nevertheless in 1844, the Noviciate was opened. The building stretched from the present Administration Office as far as the current Bursar’s Office, and its width extended only as far as the line of arches outside the Headmaster’s Office. Before the school opened in 1847 the front was extended northwards to join up with Pugin’s new Chapel – the present Old Library. The next twenty years witnessed a steady expansion of the buildings until the colonnade was built and, behind it, the much larger Chapel of 1867. Pugin’s original plan for the ‘Great Church’ had to be rejected by his son Edward after his father’s death in 1852, and a far more modest chapel was built which was to serve the school for almost 100 years.

Ratcliffe went through the nineteenth century reasonably calmly under Father Hutton’s Presidency, as the Headmaster was known, which lasted from 1850 – 1880. The highest number of pupils during his years of office was 125. He died in office at the age of 80. The next significant Presidency was that of Fr Joseph Cremonini (1895 - 1919) who had the difficult and sad task of steering the College through the First World War in which fifty-five Old Boys lost their lives. Amongst the saddest letters in the archives are those written to him, often from distressed parents of those who had died. The first parade of the Cadet Corps was made in 1915, to quell the eager spirit of the boys, after a visit by the Leicestershire Yeomanry. The Cadet Corps ceased in 1918 and was reinstated in 1956.