Douai School
Following the move to Douai in 1818, and the refoundation of the community by Richard Marsh, a more recognisable school emerged and by 1823, there were 28 boys on the roll.[2] Rather than the vertical house system of English schools, Douai retained the horizontal divisions of 'Rhetoric', 'Poetry', 'Grammar' and 'Syntax' throughout the nineteenth century, and even for a time in its new home in England.In the 1930s David Matthew, later Apostolic Delegate for Africa, congratulated the headmaster, Ignatius Rice, on the fact that: "no Catholic school has been so free from the influence of Arnold of Rugby as Douai has been.[7] In November 2017 a former House Master at Douai, Father Michael Creagh, was sentenced at Reading Crown Court after pleading guilty[8] to two counts of child abuse offences which were committed while he was at the Boarding School.On leaving the neighbourhood he left his chaplain to minister to the local Roman Catholics and endowed him with some 7 acres (28,000 m2) of lands and some cottages.The cricket pavilion was built in 1922 to honour the 56 Old Boys of both Douai and St Mary's College who were killed in the First World War.In 1920, the Trinidadian Louis Wharton became Douai's first Oxford University cricketer, having won a Blue for soccer the previous year.[21] After the war the Surrey all-rounder Alan Peach was cricket coach, succeeded by Frank Shipston of Nottinghamshire.A group of spectators (at Twickenham) associated with the school is credited with introducing the song Swing Low, Sweet Chariot as an English rugby union anthem.In 2019, a charitable foundation was established to promote Benedictine education at home and abroad, with the Duchess of Somerset as its Patron, and Emma Catherine Rigby, Pablo Casado Blanco and Angela McHale among its ambassadors.