I’m astonished at the quality of Herts. schools and, so far, all in close proximity to Ware.

This is a 400 acre site for a co-educational, Catholic college originally established in 1568. It was founded on that date in Douai, France, as a seminary to train priests and (later) also a Catholic school for boys. It transferred to the current site in England in 1793 to escape the depredations of the French Revolution. Girls from the adjacent Poles Convent were first admitted into the Sixth Form in 1975, and the College became fully co-educational in 1986.

St Edmund’s uses the founding date to claim their school as “the oldest Catholic School in England”.

I’m hoping to be able to construct a relation of all the site features, as with Haileybury and Imperial Service College, and have left a message on their answerphone. I’ll bring this little missive up to date if they respond.

Ermine Street

I seem to keep mentioning in these diaries schools that are close to Ermine Street.

Ermine Street runs next to this College (on the East flank). Heath Mount School (see also 21 April) is close to Ermine Street because it is close to Ware (the A10 essentially follows the route of Ermine Street near Ware, whilst Haileybury and Imperial Service College (see also 24 April) virtually has Ermine brushing it’s Western flank as it runs almost due North-South past Hertford Heath.

Ermine Street is an astonishing path. I was aware of it as a young man because I often would travel from my home town of Hull to Lincoln & back, and the main part of that road was the A15/Ermine Street, running straight as an arrow due North-South except for a kink at RAF Scampton.

Whenever you come across the name ‘Street’, then you may be looking at a Roman road; that is certainly true for Ermine Street. It was built to allow speedy travel between London & York, and went via Lincoln. All three, of course, became important centres for Catholic worship.

Interesting Factoid on the Lincolnshire Ermine Street

A great many RAF airfields are built alongside Roman Roads; for the Lincolnshire section of Ermine Street north of the town that is RAF Scampton¹. It suffered continual bombardment from German planes during WWII, and that was because it was so easy for them to accurately navigate to the site. It went like this:–

1. Fly west from Europe across the German North Sea
2. If north of the Humber then turn left when reaching the coast of England, else turn right, until you reach the mouth of the Humber
3. Fly due west along the Humber until reaching the kink at Hull, when turn due south
4. Follow the line of Ermine Street until it kinks to the left
5. Drop all your bombs on the airfield on the other side of the road

Easy!

1. For the southern section immediately below Lincoln, it is:

   • RAF Waddington
   • Temple Bruer
   • RAF Cranwell
   • RAF Barkston Heath
   • ex- RAF Spitalgate

   … and that’s only got us down to Grantham!

   As a bonus extra, I spent a few hours with some friends one night at their cafe somewhere near RAF Waddington in the late 1970s (or early 1980s, I forget which). They said that the cafe was built directly on Ermine Street. As I was getting ready to set off back to Hull a line of geese flew overhead, directly following the line of the Road. It seems that not just the Luftwaffe use Ermine Street for navigation! ↩