St. Clare’s is celebrating its 60th Birthday this year! The College was founded in 1953 by Anne Dreydel. Pictured above with the current Principal, Paula Holloway, many of you will recognise her portrait. Anne Drydel spent all of her adult life in a wheelchair but this did not stop her creating a place of learning in Oxford which would bring together young people from the UK, and initially Europe, after the devastation of the Second World War. Although she may not have invented the College’s mission statement – to advance international education and understanding – she certainly went about creating a College which did exactly that.
Today the College welcomes students from 45 different countries on a range of programmes in an atmosphere which encourages young people to find out about each other’s cultures and to make friends from all over the world, friends, moreover, which will last a lifetime.
St. Clare’s started in a house in Lathbury Road in a single room and has expanded since then to being a major land owner. We own 24 buildings and lease four more, all in the beautiful conservation area of North Oxford. For those of you who have visited the College or studied at St. Clare’s you will appreciate how these Victorian and Edwardian buildings give the place a certain charm and ‘Englishness’ as most of the houses in which we live and teach were once occupied by university professors and their families. St. Clare’s is not shut away from the world behind high walls and our students interact daily with the community in which they live.
Over the last eight years, the College has enhanced its academic reputation as witnessed in a series of excellent results. The two key inspections for us are both undertaken by the Independent School Inspectorate and both have been "outstanding".
St. Clare’s has also put more and more of its resources into refurbishing its residential houses and creating some of the best boarding accommodation in England. For those of you who have not visited us recently I would hope that you will be very pleasantly surprised at some of the changes which we have made.
So, what next? We intend to maintain the open and tolerant attitude which makes such Clare’s such a special place to live and study in; we intend to maintain the high standards which we have achieved academically across the College and we intend to continue our investment programme to make sure that our facilities are as good as we can make them.
I have only been at St. Clare’s for eight years and already have wonderful memories of the College. Spend a few moments and share your memories with us – post them on our Facebook page. Don’t forget to find the time to visit us in our 60th Anniversary year.
With my very best wishes,
Paula Holloway
For our 60th anniversary we commissioned the extraordinarily talented Oxford artist and teacher at St Clare's, Francesca Shakespeare, to paint a map to illustrate just how large the college is and show how beautiful this area of Oxford is.
Please click on the image to open a larger version. You will be amazed at her incredible skill, fine attention to detail and the beautiful colours she has produced.