Garrett Daniel Sweeney was born in Derby on 30 September 1912, the son of Daniel Sweeney and Margaret Helen Payne. He was educated at Derby School (1924-26) and Cotton College (1926-30). From there he went to the Venerable English College, Rome (1930-37), where he failed to complete his Licentiate in Philosophy at the Gregorian University in 1933 and left the College on the advice of the Rector before attempting the Licentiate in Theology. After a further short period of private study he was ordained at Derby for the Diocese of Nottingham by Bishop McNulty, 19 May 1937. He then went as assistant priest to St Peter's, Leicester (1937-41) and was next appointed parish priest at Shirebook, a mining village in the Derbyshire coalfield (1941-46). In 1940 he took an external BA in the University of London, being classified II/I in Ancient and Medieval History. In the beginning of October 1946, the Bishop of Nottingham, needing a teaching priest for a new seminary he intended to open, sent him to St Edmund's House. He was admitted by Christ's College as an affiliated student and in 1948 took a starred First in the Classical Tripos and proceeded BA. He took the Cambridge Certificate in Education externally in 1950 and proceeded MA in 1952. For sixteen years he was at St Hugh's College, Tollerton (a new Junior Seminary for the Diocese of Nottingham, opened in 1948), first as Assistant Master (1948-56) and then as Rector and Headmaster (1956-64). On 17 August 1964, Sweeney was elected Master of St Edmund's House, and on 3 September took up residence in Cambridge. On leaving Tollerton, his bishop had nominated him an Honorary Canon of the Nottingham Chapter. At the end of his tenth year of office, believing that after twelve years a change of Master would be desirable, he gave two years notice of resignation, to take effect 30 June 1976. Garrett Sweeney died just under three years into his retirement, on June 15 1979. [Notes courtesy of Garrett Sweeney, 'St Edmund's House, Cambridge: The First Eighty Years'.]