St Joseph's Society
I entered Upholland College in 1986 at the age of 16, and spent two years studying A-levels as part of my priestly formation. Coming from Liverpool, I was part of the Archdiocese of Liverpool. The College took students from all over England, but the majority of them came from the north of England. It is important to note that at that time the College was, in effect, a seminary/boarding school, as it had a large contingent of boys who were paying students and only there to study for O and A levels.
The time I was there you could enter the College at 11 or at 16 as either a paying boarding student or as a student studying for the priesthood.
As I have said, I came to Upholland at 16 to study A-levels and to discern whether a vocation to the priesthood was for me. As a seminarian, once you had completed your study at Upholland, you went from there to Ushaw College in Durham.
As I recall, the major priestly formation (philosophy, theology, canon law) all took place at Ushaw. I don’t remember studying anything like this at Upholland, just A-levels!
As we were seminarians, we were treated a bit differently than the paying students. To be honest, looking back to when I was there, the College was very much like any other Catholic boarding school, the only difference was that we had to attend morning prayer, mass, and evening prayer daily, along with novena, benediction, holy hour etc. weekly.
The real priestly formation (as you would think) started when I was 18 at Ushaw.