Oxford Movement Conference

Religious reform in England is most commonly attributed to the 1500s and Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church when he established

the Church of England and made Protestantism the country’s dominant faith. However, three hundred years later, a group of scholars from the University of Oxford campaigned for their own series of cultural and religious reforms. The intellectuals quickly gathered a national following and became known as ‘The Oxford Movement’. They challenged many of the changes brought about by The Reformation and campaigned to reassert the Church of England as a divine organisation detached from English politics.

The Oxford Movement began in the early 1800s and its impact was immediate and long-lasting. Many of the scholars involved in the movement debated arguments of theology and sought to bring back established forms of Catholic worship that had been abandoned after Henry VIII’s Protestant reforms. However, their impact went beyond simply matters of religion; their ambition to revive the old features of the Catholic Church led to a number of architectural changes, which can still be seen today. The Oxford

St Edward’s history is tightly entwined with these 19th-century developments. The School’s founder, Thomas Chamberlain, was a devoted adherent of the Oxford Movement. When he founded the School in 1863, Chamberlain’s vision was to establish a number of schools with Anglo-Catholic traditions at their heart, thus embedding the principles of the Oxford Movement in the education system. St Edward’s School’s

Movement re-established the prominence of Gothic architecture and inspired the designs of many mid-19th

rich association with the Movement is embodied in its buildings, most notably the Chapel which stands at the centre of our community. The Chapel was completed in 1878, only five years after the

century building projects, such as the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben and the Royal Courts of Justice in London, and also the design of Keble College, Oxford. So significant is the legacy of the Oxford Movement that it should feature in any conversation about religious reform in England.

School was re-located to Summertown – this physical embodiment of the Oxford Movement’s values was a key priority in the early years of the School’s foundation.

ST EDWARD’S SCHOOL WOODSTOCK ROAD, OXFORD OX2 7NN WWW.STEDWARDSOXFORD.ORG