When it came to founding independent English Catholic schools in the 19th century, different groups approached the task in different ways. Historically the religious orders led the charge, as highlighted by the recent round of school closures referenced elsewhere in this edition. Mount St Mary and Barlborough Hall were run by the Jesuits, and Our Lady’s Abingdon by the Sisters of Mercy. Benedictine schools survive at Ampleforth, Downside, Worth and Ealing – albeit in transfigured form after the horrors of the last few decades. One great Jesuit institution – perhaps the greatest – survives at Stonyhurst in Lancashire. Like many English religious establishments, it has its hinterland on the Continent during penal times; after various peregrinations it came to rest at its present site at the end of the 18th century. Its heyday came later; by the 1860s it was the largest Catholic school in England, with 250 boys, although Downside was on the rise. An associated confidence in its mission inspired a programme of improvement, not least in its buildings; as Henry Sire observes in his new history of Stonyhurst College, “one can reasonably say that education, as a civilising influence, is better carried on in splendid than in primitive surroundings”.