USHAW: traces its descent from

Douai, the home of 160 of our martyrs
From a Special Correspondent 1,400,000 Catholics living in the great indueteial North of England area bounded by the Scottish border and an imaginary line drawn from the Mersey to the Humber are given twenty newly-ordained priests each year by a College whicta is as unique for the form of its management as it is in the wealth of its history and tradition.
Ushaw, near Durham, collateral descendant with St. Edmund's, Ware, of the sixteenth century foundation made by Cardinal Allen at Douai in North France, is the Seminary not of just one Bishop, but of the whole Church in the Northern counties, as well as of
the Diocese of Shrewsbury,
Along with Upb;Hand in the Archdiocese
of Liverpool, Ushaw College has provided the majority of the 1.900 secular priests now at work in the seven dioceses which have evolved from the old Northern Vicariate for which the College was originally founded in 1808. It is owned by the Archbishop and Bishops of the Liverpool Province and by the Bishop of Shrewsbury, who appoiut the President and are ultimately responsible for the administration.
St. Cuthbert's Ring
A further link with Catholic history going farther back than Douai and Allen is established at Ushaw when the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, by virtue of his possession of the ancient spiritual jurisdiction of St. Cuthbert, Apostle of the North, wears the Saint's own ring when he ordains priests who are to work kr the Faith in the country of St. Cuthbert. Of gold, and enclosing a sapphire, the treasured ring was given in 1853 by Cardinal Wiseman to the College. Passing from the Saint's shrine in Durham Cathedral to the last Catholic Dean there, it had remained abroad and in Catholic hands throughout penal times.
Ushaw, following the tradition of Douai, educates boys who are to remain in the world alongside those destined for higher ecclesiastical studies. Normally the College has from 300 to 330 students, of whom 180 are in the secondary school stage, 45 to 55 in philosophy, and 90 to 100 in theology. Many have come from St. Cuthbert's Gram
mar School at Neweaslle, and from Si. Bede's, Manchester. The training of a Church student at Ushaw costs, as elsewhere, close on £100 a year. Where parents are unable to provide the whole amount of training costs, Bishops rely on funds collected by means of yearly appeals in their respective dioceses.
Ushaw is the pride of Catholic England, Its magnificent chapel alone is considered to be much superior io Ihe College chapels in either Oxford or Cambridge, King's Chapel excepted,
160 Martyrs
Douai College, Ushaw's predecessor, after 230 years of existence during which it gave
no fewer than 160 martyrs to the Faith in the English persecution, was seieed at the time of the French Revolution, many of the students and superiors being imprisoned for over a year. At the fall of Robespierre, 26 returned to England. when the secular College of Douai closed its history.
Almost from the outbreak of the Revolution the question of replacing Douai by a College in England had occupied the atten
tion of the Vicars Apostolic. Though it was wished to establish one College for the whole of England, there were disputes as to its possible location, it being contended by many that the new Douai should be placed in the North, where Catholics were numerous and where food and fuel were cheap. Insurmeuntable difficulties led to a division. Ware being established for the South and Ushaw for the North. When the Northern Douai opened with eight students in 1794 in its temporary home at Crook Hall, Co. Durham, a new student was able to write in his diary as follows: " I have spent just one day in ye old Douay customs, for Crook aims to come as near them as circumstances will allow."
Bishop Gibson laid the foundation-stone in 1804 of Ushaw College on a small property of some 250 acres acquired at the cost of nearly £4,600, and Crook students moved into the new building in due course.
Ushaw: from the air; from the ground.