As one drives through northern France, it is easy to ignore the signs to Douai. It has no cathedral to match Amiens, no world-famous gastronomic speciality. For some reason, it is twinned with Harrow-on-the-Hill. Most tourists will drive on to more fashionable destinations, such as the Loire or Burgundy.
Yet Douai was once the home of the English, Scots and Irish Colleges as well as houses for the English Benedictines and Franciscans, making it the ‘capital’ of the British Catholic diaspora for over two centuries. The town was, of course, situated near the Channel, making it eminently accessible. As of 1562 it was the seat of a new university, designed to be part of the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. British Catholic exiles had already made their home there by the time William Allen (pictured) founded an English College there in 1568, many of them university men who had informally arranged themselves into houses called “Oxford” and “Cambridge”.
