Walter Stanley Senior was the son of Walter Senior, a clergyman. His uncle was Edward Senior, headmaster of Sheffield Royal Grammar School which he attended from 1888 to 1891. He continued his early education at Marlborough, a school to which he was deeply attached and about which he wrote both in prose and verse. From Marlborough, he won a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford. He took a First Class in Classical Honour Moderations (Intermediate examination) and a Second Class in Greats (classics or philosophy). He was the author of a work titled Pisgah or The Choice, which won the triennial prize poem on a sacred subject in the University of Oxford, 1914.
