History

Princethorpe College opened in September 1966, but its roots go much further back. In 1833, a community of Benedictine nuns purchased an estate of nearly 190 acres in Princethorpe. Here they built St Mary’s Priory, one of the first Catholic monasteries to be built in England since the Reformation.
 

From 1835 the nuns ran a small boarding school for girls at the Priory; over the decades they also continued to develop the Priory buildings and grounds, with the most notable addition being the new Chapel which was consecrated in 1901. By the mid-1960s, however, they had realised that it was time to move to smaller premises.

Around the same time, an order of priests named the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSCs) were seeking larger premises to expand their boys’ school, St Bede’s College in Leamington Spa. The MSCs purchased the Priory estate from the nuns in 1965 and opened Princethorpe College as a boys’ senior school in 1966; St Bede’s continued to run as a preparatory school until its closure in 1976. As a tribute to the original school, Princethorpe College’s sports hall was named St Bede’s when it was opened in 1979.

Over the years the College has seen many new developments, while always retaining the Spirit of Family which has been central to its ethos ever since it was founded. Initially open as a boarding and day school for boys only, the College began admitting girls to the Sixth Form in 1976 and became fully co-educational in 1995. In 2001 the College joined with St Joseph’s in Kenilworth to form the Warwickshire Catholic Independent Schools Foundation; Princethorpe maintained its role as the senior school within the partnership, while St Joseph’s continued solely as a preparatory school, now known as Crackley Hall. The partnership was renamed The Princethorpe Foundation in 2010, and was joined by Crescent School in 2016.

Boarding ended at the College in summer 2004, and subsequent years saw the development of further teaching and learning spaces including the Sixth Form Centre in 2008, The Limes in 2014 and the new state-of-the-art Science Centre in 2023. Princethorpe College has continued to expand and flourish, growing from around 180 pupils when it first opened to over 900 today; throughout the years, its rich heritage and strong sense of community have remained at the heart of the College and the Foundation as a whole.