St Vincent College

St Vincent College offers A levels, vocational courses, apprenticeships and university-level courses in Gosport, Hampshire. Gosport is historically a military town and the history of the College site dates back over 150 years to where St Vincent was HMS St Vincent, a Naval Training Base where new recruits would complete their initial 12 week induction training before being deployed. When the Training Base closed, it became a school and then St Vincent College. As a key Post-16 and Adult Education provider in Gosport we want to continue to support Armed Services families and are proud to be associated with the Covenant. 

The college welcome community groups for evening and weekend sport sessions. You can see what is available via the 'facilities for hire' section on our website, then by looking in the 'evening and weekend bookings' section.

History of St Vincent Sixth Form College

The first St Vincent

The college’s namesake was a fireship – a naval vessel designed specifically to be set on fire and intentionally rammed into enemy ships. It was captured from the French by the Royal Navy in 1692 and sold on in 1698. The St Vincent name passed on to a captured Spanish sloop, the San Vicente, in 1780, which was sold on three years later.

Training legacy begins

The third incarnation, a 120-gun ‘Nelson Class’ ship of the line, was launched at Devonport in 1815 and commissioned in 1829. The fourth HMS St Vincent was a Dreadnought battleship built in Portsmouth dockyard and completed in May 1909. She which saw some action in the First World War, damaging a German cruiser during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Both ships ended their days as training vessels, the third at Haslar, close to where the Gosport Marina lightship Mary Mouse 2 is berthed, until 1905. The final floating version was a gunnery training ship at Portsmouth until June 1919.

Ship to shore

Forton barracks had been in various guises until 1923. After extensive repairs it was renamed HMS Vincent and opened in 1927 as a training school for boy seamen. At the outbreak of the Second World War the boys were evacuated to HMS George on the Isle of Man and the college became first a training centre for officers of the Fleet Air Arm and, in July 1940, a torpedo training section. At the end of the war the boys returned and it continued to shape the lives of young sailors until it closed on December 8, 1969. However the white ensign was not finally lowered until April 2, 1969, the days before the site was sold to developers.

Back to school

With many of the historic buildings demolished (but not the iconic clocktower) St Vincent Secondary School opened on the site in 1975. Gosport Sixth Form College opened on the site in 1987 under a re-organisation of secondary education in the area. The two establishments ran side by side until 1990 when the school’s final Year 11 departed. The college then took on the name we know today, St Vincent. The college became part of the Lighthouse Learning Trust in 2017.