A school raised in the shadow of the shrines

Where the Mission Began

From a martyrs' witness to a school

The story of Uganda Martyrs Namugongo starts with courage, not curriculum. In 1886, a group of young men attached to the royal court chose their faith over their lives at this very site. Pilgrims have walked here every third of June since, and in 1964 twenty-two of the Catholic martyrs were declared saints by Pope Paul VI.

In 1967, four friends turned that legacy into a school, believing the martyrs' courage was worth teaching as much as remembering. What began as a handful of classrooms grew over the decades into a fuller institution — a primary section feeding into secondary school, and eventually a nursery too, all raising children within a few hundred metres of the shrine that gave the school its name.

That's still the shape of things today. Our pupils walk past the Basilica on their way to school and learn their times tables in classrooms built on ground their great-grandparents may have walked as pilgrims. We think that proximity should mean something in how we teach, not just where we happen to be located.