City of London School, also known as CLS, is a private day school for boys in the City of London, England, on the banks of the River Thames next to the Millennium Bridge, opposite Tate Modern. It is a partner school of the City of London School for Girls and the City of London Freemen's School. All three schools receive funding from the City's Cash. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC).
The school was founded by a private act of Parliament, the Establishment of Honey Lane Market School Act 1834 (4 & 5 Will. 4. c. 35 ), following a bequest of land in 1442 for poor children in the City of London. The original school was established at Milk Street, moving first to the Victoria Embankment in 1879 and subsequently to its present site on Queen Victoria Street in 1986.
Former pupils, known as Old Citizens, who have attained eminence in various fields are former UK Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, First World War hero Theodore Bayley Hardy, Nobel Prize–winning scientists Frederick Gowland Hopkins and Peter Higgs, Justice of the Supreme Court Lawrence Collins, Historian John Robert Seeley, England cricket captain Mike Brearley, chemist and entrepreneur William Henry Perkin, Booker Prize-winning authors Kingsley Amis and Julian Barnes, film director Michael Apted, and actor Daniel Radcliffe.
The school provides day education to about 1,000 boys aged 11 to 18 and employs approximately 100 teaching staff and around another 100 non-teaching staff. The majority of pupils enter at 11, some at 13 and some at 16 into the Sixth Form. Admissions are based on an entrance examination and an interview, with the exception of pupils educated at the City Junior School, who are given an automatic place at 11+.
History
The City of London School traces its origins to a bequest of land by John Carpenter, town clerk of London. On his death in 1442, it was found that Carpenter had listed many bequests, most to his relatives but some to charitable causes. There were no bequests listed to directly support the education of boys in the City of London. However, a bequest of land was left to two trusted friends who were aware that Carpenter desired a legacy which would support children, and in turn the land was passed on to John Don, an influential man in the City of London. On his death, Don left his own will incorporating the words used in Carpenter's bequest of land and his intentions for the land, that it be "for the finding and bringing up of four poor men's children with meat, drink, apparel, learning at the schools, in the universities, etc., until they be preferred, and then others in their places for ever." The four boys became known as Carpenter's Children.
Little is known of the early years of the legacy. This bequest was administered by the Corporation of London in around 1460 and a small college was founded next to Guildhall Chapel, also using the library facilities in the chapel. Despite the fact that this continued for over 70 years, the earliest certain evidence of the existence of Carpenter's Children can only be traced back to 1536, and thus it is not clear who these boys were, what they were taught and where they lived. In 1547, under the Chantries Act 1547 the Guildhall Chapel and Library were forfeited. The funding for the four boys was also discontinued. The Corporation of London remained in control of Carpenter's estate and accounts from the next 300 years show that the money continued to be spent on children's benefits such as providing new coats to every child or providing them with access to education.
In 1823, a report published by the Charity Commission revealed that over the centuries, the income from the bequest vastly exceeded the expenses of the boys' education. In response to the report, the Corporation of London indicated that it had taken, "great pains...by searching in the archives of the corporation and other places for the will of John Carpenter, without effect". Had the Corporation instead looked for the will of John Don, it would have received guidance in what to do with the money.
Lacking that guidance, discussions began on how the bequest money should be spent. The City Lands Committee suggested in a report that the bequest should be spent on educating a larger number of boys and this approach was adopted in 1826. A number of people including Richard Taylor, a printer and an assistant to the founding of University College London, urged the Corporation of London to spend the bequest on creating a day school for the largest possible number of boys. In 1830, they proposed that the City of London Corporation School should be founded with Taylor as a governor and that the school to be established on the site of the disused London Workhouse. In the meantime, a small number of boys, who became known as Carpenter's scholars, were sent to Tonbridge School. An act of Parliament, the Estate of the London Workhouse Act 1829 (10 Geo. 4. c. 43 ), was passed to transform the workhouse into a school and governors were appointed. Conditions at the workhouse site had deteriorated and much money was needed for its maintenance. The only funds available, though, were the same £300 (about £30,000 in 2016) a year budget the workhouse had received.
Over the next few years, the workhouse proposal was seen by the City of London Lord Mayor's deputation and the City Lands Committee (Taylor was a member of both), as impractical, and other schemes were proposed. In 1832, Warren Stormes Hale, who believed that the workhouse proposal was not the best use of Carpenter's legacy, was appointed to the City Lands Committee. He became chairman of the committee in 1833, and would come to be considered the second founder of the City of London School, after Carpenter.
At this point, the City Lands Committee started to search for better locations for a school. They selected Honey Lane Market, a site on Milk Street, as their preferred location. However, this proposal faced the same funding difficulties as the workhouse proposal: only £300 per year was available, insufficient to build and maintain a school. This problem was not recognised until the bill to found the school reached the House of Lords. An altered bill was finalised in 1834, removing any references to the London Workhouse and addressing the Lords' objections.
The altered bill was passed as an act of Parliament, the (4 & 5 Will. 4. c. 35 ). It was this act which founded the City of London School, which initially had around 400 pupils. The act gave the Corporation of London a duty to maintain a school on the Honey Lane Market site and so gave control over almost every aspect of the school's running to the corporation. A committee was also set up to manage the school, with Hale as chairman. Although the committee's powers were initially limited, they gained more control over time as they made important decisions for the school.
The act gave the new school an annual budget of £900 (around £107,000 in 2016) from the bequest while the governors of the City of London Corporation School, who still wanted to implement their original idea, gained nothing, only retaining the old workhouse income. Both Hale and the Corporation of London were also eager to create this second school, which the governors of the City of London Corporation School had proposed. Despite their efforts, the other school was not founded until 1854, as the Freemen's Orphanage School, in Brixton with Hale as chairman. The Freemen's Orphanage School still exists today as the City of London Freemen's School in Surrey.
Establishment at Milk Street
The foundation stone of the new school was laid by Lord Brougham at premises in Milk Street, in the City of London near Cheapside, on part of the site of the old Honey Lane Market, in 1835 and the school opened its doors in 1837.
The school was remarkable for its time in several respects. It did not discriminate against pupils on the grounds of religious persuasion (at a time when most public schools had an Anglican emphasis); it included pupils from non-conformist and Jewish families. Also, unlike other established independent schools, it was a day school (although there were in early days a handful of boarders, no boarding department ever became established). It also promoted a practical and progressive scheme of education which was well ahead of its time. It was the first school in England to include science on the curriculum and to include scientific experiments as part of its teaching. It also offered education in commercial subjects. This did not, however, diminish its teaching in the subjects traditionally favoured by the traditional public schools, and it sent classical and mathematical scholars to Oxford and Cambridge throughout the 19th century. These included the classicist, theologian and Shakespearean scholar Edwin Abbott Abbott (whose mathematical exploration of a world in other than three dimensions, Flatland, is still in print and who returned to the school as headmaster), John Robert Seeley – a classics scholar who became Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University and H. H. Asquith, who though educated as a classical scholar went on to become the British Prime Minister.
Move to Blackfriars
The school eventually outgrew its original site. While some public schools moved away from Greater London in the late 19th century, the management and committee of City of London jointly decided to stay in the capital, as it was deemed a stimulating environment for education. A City of London School Act 1879 (c.63) empowered the school to move to a new site in the City of London at Blackfriars on the Victoria Embankment overlooking the Thames. The school moved in 1883 and the new building was opened by the Prince of Wales, (the future King Edward VII). In 1887 the Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal determined that the City of London School was a public school.Blake v The Mayor and Citizens of the City of London L.R. 19 Q.B.D. 79.
In November 1912, the Education Committee appointed Cyril Burt as a psychologist in the education officer's department. In Britain, this was the first appointment in a field of psychology outside a university. From 1913 to 1931 Burt examined pupils nominated for admission to special schools. His mandate included selection and research.
In 1920, an arrangement was made whereby all the boy choristers of the Temple Church were given scholarships at the City of London School. In 1926, this arrangement was extended to the boy choristers of the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace.The history of the school, City of London School, retrieved 11 July 2009 The choristers included Ernest Lough, whose recording of Mendelssohn's "O for the Wings of a Dove" with the Temple Choir in 1927 made him world-famous; by 1962 it became the first classical record to sell more than a million copies. Another musician educated at the school was the cellist Steven Isserlis.
Second World War
In 1938, the headmaster F.R. Dale made an agreement with George Turner, headmaster of Marlborough College, to evacuate the school there, if it became necessary. On 1 September 1939 following the German invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War, the majority of the school were sent to Marlborough College by train.
Accommodation was not provided in the agreement with Marlborough College and so Turner wrote to the Mayor of Marlborough to request accommodation in town. Many of the accommodation billets were occupied by soldiers and women working for the Ministry of Health at the time and so for the first night, the boys slept in the gymnasium of the school, before moving into the town's billets the following night.