Historic Location

Although we are not a faith school, our campus has a long history of religious use, and before that an even longer history of secular use as a manor house and estate.

We are located within the Begbroke Conservation Area of Oxfordshire which was established in July 1991. This is a designated area that protects the character of Begbroke village and its surroundings.

The conservation area is characterised by the use of local materials, mostly limestone, which is used for building in traditional styles. There is also an extensive use of dry-stone walls for borders, instead of fences or hedges.

There was an ‘old dwelling house’ on the site before the 1660s, probably a large farmhouse, but by 1662 there was a new building. This was now more of an established manor house and it was known as Begbroke House. The house had been built by Colonel John Butler with stone reclaimed from the ruins of Woodstock Palace (an old royal palace three miles away that had been destroyed in the English Civil War).

A new buyer of the house in 1662, John Nott, insisted that Colonel John Butler give him a written guarantee that he had the rights to have used ‘the king’s stone’ to build the house. Some of the Woodstock Palace stone was also used to build nearby Blenheim Palace which opened in 1722.

The main entrance area of our school, and the wooden beams in our reception, date from the original 17^th century building.

In 1896 the house and land were bought by Charles Robertson. He then donated them to the Roman Catholic Servite Order in gratitude for his own conversion to Catholicism. So, in 1897, the estate opened as St. Philip’s Priory.

The Servites, or the ‘Order of the Servants of Mary’, were one of the original orders (monastic groups) of the Catholic Church. However, they’d been in decline in Europe ever since the Reformation. The late 1800s saw a revival in their fortunes and this continued globally throughout the 20^th century. Begbroke was one of the first of the new priories in this Servite renaissance.

Our dining hall still retains the original and spectacular stained-glass windows of the priory church. All but one of the windows were designed by John Hardman & Co of Birmingham in 1899, when the church was built. They generally tell the story of the Catholic church and the Servites in the UK, as well giving a nod to Charles Robertson and his wife, the benefactors that donated Begroke House to the Servites. For pictures, descriptions and explanations of all the windows click the button below.

As the number of CSJB English sisters dwindled, the CSJB sold the site to The Licensed Trade Charity in 2012 for the establishment of a school for autistic children. We remain here today, surrounded by a past that goes back to the 17^th century. We have added new buildings, sympathetic to the existing architecture, and modern facilities to the site to serve the needs of our school, but we hope that when you visit our campus you will get a sense of its past and you’ll value our heritage as much as we do.