Heritage
A History of Oscott
Our story is a revival story. Our college is closely associated with the ‘Second Spring’, the term St John Henry Newman used to describe the Victorian revival of English Catholicism.
Our story goes all the way back to a local priest starting a mission from his family home.
In the 17th century, Andrew Bromwich founded a Catholic mission in the hamlet locally called ‘Auscot’.
This became the first home of the college, founded in 1794 as a residential school for boys and a centre for the training of priests. The first priest trained at Oscott College was Francis Martyn, ordained in 1805.
By the 1830s, the college was flourishing as English Catholic life expanded, following the removal of the legal prohibitions in place since the 16th century.
In 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Act gave Catholics throughout Britain and Ireland the right to sit in Parliament and take up public office.
The first phase of the industrial revolution enabled towns and cities to develop, and provided new opportunities for Catholics who migrated from the countryside alongside the rest of the population in search of a new life.
Oscott’s buildings were too cramped, and Thomas Walsh dreamt of building a new college, fit for the future, to reflect the growing ambition of the Catholic community.
His vision was a college that was a foundation for the revival of Catholicism, and a symbol of the changing position of Catholics in society. The striking hilltop site on Hawthorn Brook Farm was visible from a great distance. No expense was spared, and in 1838 the new college opened.
Money was raised quickly from generous benefactors, particularly the 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, who donated cash, treasures and works of art. The final cost of the new college was £51,090 9s. 9d. and the building itself was made up of 199,800 bricks.
When work on the new college was almost complete in 1837, the Earl of Shrewsbury brought in a young architect and designer named Augustus Welby Pugin. Pugin was only 24, with a loud voice and eccentric appearance.
Pugin added the north and south lodges at each entrance to the college, was given an entirely free hand with the chapel decoration, and designed much of the domestic furniture, including chairs, bookcases and the eight huge refectory tables. He was given the honorary title of Professor of Ecclesiastical Art and Architecture, and lived partly at Oscott, completing designs, giving lectures and writing, until 1842.
He studied the craftsmanship of ancient buildings and recreated a world of vibrant colour and religious imagery, interpreting medieval imagery anew. His work had a deliberate purpose: to draw the mind and heart to God. In the dust- and smoke-ridden world of Victorian cities, Pugin realised the power of colour and imagery to stir people’s imaginations and inspire them to find God in prayer and worship.
From 1848, plans for the restoration of an English Catholic hierarchy (the structures of diocese and bishops) were underway. In 1850, Wiseman was appointed as the Archbishop of Westminster, and in July 1852 the newly appointed Catholic bishops of England and Wales gathered at Oscott for the first synod of Catholic bishops in England in over two hundred years.
At this synod, Fr John Henry Newman preached from the chapel pulpit. His words that day are now referred to as the ‘Second Spring sermon’, a rousing sermon which captured this moment of revival for English Catholicism. Newman spoke of Catholic life springing afresh, almost miraculously, from the darkness and oppression of penal times.
‘The English Church was, and the English Church was not, and the English Church is once again. This is the portent, worthy of a cry. It is the coming in of a Second Spring’.
He also describes Oscott College. ‘And there on that high spot … appears, with many fronts and courts, and long cloisters and corridors … there it rises, under the invocation of that same sweet name which has been our consolation in the valley.’
With the closure of the school at Oscott in 1889 came plans for the better harnessing of seminary resources at Oscott. Under Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, Oscott College was formally constituted as the Central Seminary of the country, and from 1896 it served the dioceses of Westminster, Birmingham, Clifton, Newport, Portsmouth, Northampton and all of Wales.
The aim was to pool resources and provide the best possible teaching, a uniformity of standards in clergy training, and a broader outlook among the students.
It was a short-lived experiment. After Vaughan’s death, Oscott no longer served as the Central Seminary, and in 1909 it became the Birmingham Diocesan Seminary, although it continues to receive seminarians from other dioceses and religious orders. Its upkeep and staffing remain the responsibility of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.
The Catholic history of the 20th century is divided by the watershed of the Second Vatican Council, which reflected the need for the Church to adapt the ways in which it presented the message of the Gospel.
All aspects of life in the Catholic Church would be affected by the Council, including the training of men for the priesthood, and Oscott life adapted accordingly. Informal tutorials and seminars replaced some of the lectures, and there was a greater expectation that seminarians would take greater personal responsibility for their studies.
A new emphasis was placed on practical pastoral experience. Oscott seminarians were required to spend considerable periods of time in parishes, seeing first-hand how priests ministered to people in their homes, hospitals, schools, and prisons, and through social outreach programmes to the homeless, immigrants, and society’s marginalised.
By the end of the 20th century, courses at Oscott were validated by the University of Birmingham and the Catholic University of Leuven. The teaching staff began to include non-resident lay staff, and in 1998 a woman was appointed for the first time to the full-time formation staff.
The momentous event of Oscott’s recent history was the visit of Pope Benedict XVI on 19th September 2010 following the beatification of John Henry Newman, which set him on the path to sainthood. As they had in 1852, the bishops of England and Wales and those of Scotland, plus all of their seminarians, gathered in Oscott and were accommodated for lunch.
This was the first time in history that a pope had visited a seminary on British soil. Less than a decade later, on 19th September 2019, St John Henry Newman was canonised by Pope Francis in Rome. St Mary’s College, Oscott was granted a saint, recognised by the worldwide Church, whose footsteps echo in its corridors and who is part of its story.
Our rare books collection, The Library Special Collection, contains some 12,000 early printed books and pamphlets. It is available for scholarly use by academic researchers.
The Birmingham Archdiocesan Archives look after our archives. They are happy to support the research of undergraduate and postgraduate degree students, academic researchers, local historians, parish historians, teachers, and family historians.
Established in 1839 by renowned, Gothic-revivalist architect Augustus Welby Pugin, our museum collection tells the story of the college and the Victorian Catholic revival.
Want to experience some history? Our tours have been running for over a decade, removing the mystery of the college and giving the general public a sense of what we do here.