St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School 3.94

St Bernard's Catholic Grammar School is a fully selective Roman Catholic Grammar School on Langley Road, Langley, Berkshire. It was previously designated as a Humanities College. The student body is divided into four different houses - Annay, Clairvaux, Cîteaux and La Plaine. The houses are named after various monastic houses, relating to the school's history. The school's motto is "Dieu Mon Abri", which means "God is my Shelter". The crest is a diamond, with three parallel, diagonal, swords on a blue background.HistoryAldin HouseThe school is built around and includes Aldin House, which dates from about 1860. Nikolaus Pevsner believed the house was built by and for Charles Aldin.It was widely believed that the house was built for Angela Burdett-Coutts but that she never lived there as Queen Victoria did not approve of her marriage to the much younger William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett. The marriage did not take place until 1881, however, when the house had already entered use as a school so Pevsner's version seems more plausible. In 1869, John Hawtrey opened St Michael's School in Aldin House. The school remained there for 14 years, with pupils including the future Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. The original chapel was built in 1875, and dedicated as an Anglican chapel by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce of Oxford. After St. Michael's left, the site was used for a year by the Welsh Charity School of Ashford, Middlesex while their usual buildings were modified, and subsequently St George's School, Southwark used the building for the same purpose. The Jesuit Fathers bought the house and used it as a college for eight years.