Housemaster, monk and friend: Fr Edward Corbould OSB, 1932-2024

Dom Edward Corbould died on 6 November at the age of 92. For three and a half decades of his long life he was Housemaster of St Edward’s House at Ampleforth; he represented one of the last links between the present-day monastery and its more glorious past. He joined the school in 1946, and, as was still common at the time, became one of the boys who later joined the monastic community.

Born in Suffolk on 29 September 1932, Michael Corbould was the son of a High Anglican vicar and his aristocratic wife. Not long after he was born, they took the decision to “cross the Tiber”, and the family was received into the Catholic Church by the Jesuits at Farm Street. After they moved to Norfolk he was sent to All Hallows, a Catholic prep school which had been evacuated to Devon but returned to Somerset after the war.

From there he went to Ampleforth, at a time when the school was almost entirely staffed by monks. Corbould was happy there, and a member of St Edward’s House, which he would later lead. He enjoyed sports and the CCF, and was academically promising – he won a place at Oxford – but soon felt called to the cloister. When he left in 1951 his father wisely suggested that he might benefit from a year in the world of work instead.

It did not take long away from Ampleforth for Corbould to realise that he was called to return. He entered the traditional two-year novitiate, taking the name of Edward. It was deliberately austere, and designed to weed out anyone not suited to the rigours of the religious life, but Corbould persisted and was duly professed. After studies in philosophy he finally went to Oxford to read history at St Benet’s Hall, of blessed memory.

He returned to Ampleforth again in 1959, to teach. Dom Paul Nevill, who had transformed the school’s fortunes over the previous three decades, had not long stepped down as headmaster; Corbould became part of that legacy of increased academic standards. In those days the monastic community hovered at around 150 monks; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1962, the year that saw the opening sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

Four years later, the then-abbot, Basil Hume – later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster – asked Corbould to take over his old house, known as “The Jam Factory”. Not a natural disciplinarian, he made a point of appealing to the boys’ better nature to ensure the smooth running of business, with considerable effect. Punishment, when it needed to be meted out, would be humane: working in the garden (which he loved) or going for a run.

Part of his appeal was that Corbould understood the importance of being fast to forgive; his boys quickly came to trust him. They also took up his enthusiasm for cross-country running, and The Jam Factory usually won the annual school cross-country competition. Places in Corbould’s house at Ampleforth were much in demand, and it remained free from scandal when in later years darker clouds hovered over others.

Corbould cared about the wellbeing of his boys in this world, but also in the next. He regularly addressed them on any number of topics which he thought would serve them well, from the finer points of theology to the importance of simple good manners. He talked about death, too, and judgement, heaven and hell.

“One of you in this room will be dead in the next ten years,” he used to say (while also noting that statistically it was most likely to be him). He encouraged them not to fear death, but to see it rather as the fulfilment of life. “People need to know that, particularly when people are ill. Don’t be afraid.”

Robert Nairac, who would go on to become a British Army officer infamously murdered by the IRA in 1977 while serving in Northern Ireland, and subsequently awarded a posthumous George Cross, was among the boys entrusted to Corbould’s care.

He retired from St Edward’s in 2002 – about the same time he was named Country Life Gardener of the Year – and continued to keep in touch with serried ranks of Old Amplefordians of all generations. To many of them he became a combination of honorary godfather and domestic chaplain; one of them provided him with a car and the use of a cottage on his estate.

“Fr Edward was probably the most decent holy man you could ever wish to meet,” one of his more distinguished old boys reflected. “No malice, a tremendous faith, a real genuine humility and a beacon of hope and inspiration. I saw him at Ampleforth in early September; he was frail, but still his old loving and caring self.”

He was much in demand for family sacraments and good at remembering birthdays. But above all Corbould reminded those who knew him of the importance of prayer. He was himself a regular pilgrim to Medjugorje and Lourdes, and a conventual chaplain of the Order of Malta. He never retired from the Ampleforth CCF, and was still on its books when he died.

On his 90th birthday Corbould was asked what he thought about his enormous social circle, drawn from his St Edward’s boys, their families and friends. His response was characteristically self-effacing: “I’m incredibly lucky; I really am.”

Photo: Fr Edward Corbould OSB. (Credit: Ampleforth Abbey on ‘X’ social media platform.)

This article appears in the special Advent and Christmas 2024 double edition of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click HERE.

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