Campion Hall is the Jesuit Permanent Private Hall at the University of Oxford. Rooted in the Jesuit tradition of humanistic education, it offers a supportive academic community in which students from a wide range of backgrounds pursue graduate study and are encouraged to use their learning in the service of wider society.
The story began in September 1896, when what is now Campion Hall was established in St Giles’, Oxford. It was then known as Clarke’s Hall, after its first Master, Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839–1900).
Its foundation marked an important moment in the history of Catholics at Oxford. Changes to university legislation during the nineteenth century had opened degrees and positions to those outside the Church of England, and the Society of Jesus became the first Catholic body to open a Hall at Oxford. For the first time, Jesuits were able to study for Oxford degrees.
Fr Clarke was a graduate and former Fellow of St John’s College who had originally taken Anglican orders. He became a Catholic in 1869 and entered the Society of Jesus in 1871. His Oxford qualifications enabled him to obtain the licence required to establish a private hall for Jesuit undergraduates.
Following the Oxford convention that private halls were named after their Masters, Clarke’s Hall later became Pope’s Hall and then Plater’s Hall.
In 1918, it became a Permanent Private Hall of the University and adopted the name Campion Hall in honour of St Edmund Campion SJ, the Jesuit priest and martyr who, like Fr Clarke, had been a Fellow of St John’s College. St Edmund Campion is Oxford University’s only Catholic saint and martyr.
A new chapter began under Fr Martin Cyril D’Arcy SJ, who became Master in 1933. Through Lady Frances Horner, D’Arcy was introduced to the celebrated architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, who offered to design a new home for the Hall.
Work began on a site in Brewer Street in 1934, and the community moved into the new building the following year. Lutyens’ design incorporated the existing Micklem Hall and included the Main Chapel, Refectory and Library.
The writer Evelyn Waugh donated the royalties from his biography of St Edmund Campion to the Hall, helping to pay for the decoration of the new Lady Chapel by muralist Charles Mahoney.
The Hall’s history also brought its community into contact with some of the leading figures of the age, with Albert Einstein appearing alongside members of Campion Hall in a photograph taken at an Oxford Union event (see below).
Campion Hall remains on Brewer Street today. One hundred and thirty years after its foundation, it continues the tradition of Jesuit life, learning and scholarship at the University of Oxford that began in 1896.
Find out more about Campion Hall, including opportunities to study there, on the Campion Hall website.
Photos courtesy of British Jesuit Archives.
