Westcott House, Cambridge

Westcott House is a Church of England theological college based in Jesus Lane in the centre of the university city of Cambridge in the United Kingdom (though it is not part of the university). Its main activity is training people for ordained ministry in the Church of England and other Anglican churches. Westcott House is a founder member of the Cambridge Theological Federation. The college is considered by many to be modern catholic or Liberal Catholic in its tradition, but accepts ordinands from a range of traditions in the Church of England.HistoryWestcott House began its life in 1881 as the Cambridge Clergy Training School. Brooke Foss Westcott, the then Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge was its first president. He later became the Bishop of Durham. A pioneering and respected New Testament scholar himself, the school was the product of Westcott's own passionate concern to raise the standard of clergy education and to equip clergy to meet the challenges of parish ministry. Westcott was also exercised by the way in which the Church of England was increasingly dominated by parties and factions. Westcott himself eschewed any party affiliation. The College has often been associated with a liberal catholic ethos, although its essential charism embraces the breadth of the Church of England and the wider church: 'As a scholar, educator, priest and prophet, Westcott's legacy to the Church of England challenges sectarianism, ignorance, complacency and empty faith. This is the spirit which Westcott House seeks to honour today, drawing students from all backgrounds to prepare them for ministry in this historic centre of Christian learning'.