Born in Mortlake, England, on September 2, 1875, Charles Dominic Plater was educated at the Jesuits’ Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, where he was remarkably popular with masters and fellow students alike for his personal magnetism and his regular success in winning school prizes.
He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Roehampton, southwest London, on September 7, 1894. In 1900 he interrupted his philosophy course at the end of its second year to proceed to the Jesuit Hall (Campion Hall), Oxford, to read classics. Gaining a Second in Mods (exams taken in the first part of an Oxford degree) and then a First in Greats (a degree in Classics), Plater accompanied his early success and promise in classics with a lifelong interest in archaeology.