Becoming ‘Simmarians’: the beginnings of Catholic teacher education, homosocial community, and student formation at St Mary’s College, Hammersmith, c.1854–1914

This article reconstructs the student experience at St Mary’s College, Hammersmith (c.1854–1914), the first Catholic teacher training college in Britain. Using diaries, correspondence, magazines, and administrative records, it outlines the profile of the student body as predominantly young men of Irish descent from working-class communities in northern England and Scotland. It examines their educational formation, devotional practices, domestic routines, leisure pursuits, and the distinctive homosocial culture that bound them together as ‘Simmarians’. The article argues that St Mary’s was more than a site of professional preparation: it functioned as an ‘emotional community’ in which Catholic masculinity, vocation, and identity were consciously shaped. By situating the Simmarian experience within the wider development of Catholic schooling and the history of emotions, the study shifts attention from policy to lived formation, offering new insights into the making of Catholic teachers and the cultural significance of male community life in Victorian and Edwardian England.