Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton area of Liverpool.
Foundations The Collegiate is a striking, Grade II listed building, with a facade of pink Woolton sandstone, designed in Tudor Gothic style by the architect of the city's St. George's Hall, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. The foundation stone was laid in 1840 and the Liverpool Collegiate Institution was opened by William Gladstone on 6 January 1843, originally as a fee-paying school for boys of middle-class parents and administered as three distinct organisations under a single headmaster. The Upper School became Liverpool College and relocated to Lodge Lane in 1884, whilst the Middle and Lower (or Commercial) Schools occupied the original site and would combine to form the Liverpool Collegiate School in 1908.
The Collegiate magazine, Esmeduna, which first appeared in 1896 and continued publication until 1978, was named after the ancient Liverpool manor mentioned in the Domesday Book, a name which had evolved into 'Smethesdune' by 1288 and survives to this day as Smithdown Road. Although aspects of Collegiate School life such as the annual Prize Giving, Founders Day Service, the school motto in Latin, and Esmeduna, along with the majestic Shaw Street building itself, stem from Victorian times, many enduring traditions originated after the Education Act 1902 gave new local education authorities powers to run secondary schools. The Collegiate was purchased by Liverpool Corporation in 1907 and was transformed into a single, integrated establishment entrusted to provide a high quality grammar school education.
The Grammar School years The first headmaster of the new, LEA-controlled Liverpool Collegiate School was Samuel Edward Brown, appointed in 1908, a Cambridge graduate who set out to secure academic success at a time when the mark of a great school was the number of pupils winning university scholarships. The Collegiate also started to earn an enviable reputation within the city and beyond, and pupil numbers rose from around 400 in 1908 to over 1000 by the early 1920s. Fuelled by the desire to prove itself more than a poor relation of Liverpool College, the School succeeded in attracting "first class graduates, many from Oxbridge, to teach at the Collegiate, in a depressingly urban setting in what was then an unfashionable Northern city", inspirational teachers who helped "to transform the school in a generation into one of the leading grammar schools in the country".H. S. Corran, 'Liverpool Collegiate School 1908–1985 a Short History' (p.69)
Yearly dramatic or musical productions were instigated, including the school tradition of staging Gilbert & Sullivan operettas which endured for half a century. A new school organ was installed by Rushworth and Dreaper in 1913. Annual School Camps began in 1914, and from the 1920s Games lessons were conducted at Holly Lodge playing fields in West Derby.
In 1929, following the death of the first headmaster, the post was taken up by Arnold MacKenzie Gibson. He embarked on a broadening of the school curriculum and wished to place as much emphasis on the 'average boy' as the high-achieving university candidate. Gibson put in place alternative routes by which boys could make progress up the school and tried to ensure that all pupils received a well-rounded education, believing the education of the whole person, for leisure as much as work, to be as important as subject specialisation. From the early 1930s more school trips were arranged including a summer school at Dunkirk, regular exchanges with pupils in France and Germany and the continuation of the customary summer camp on the Isle of Man.
A new school song, 'Paean Esmedunensis', with music by Gibson and words in Latin by his deputy, Victor Dunstan, was first performed at the Annual Prize Giving of 1931 and would last the lifetime of the Collegiate. Paean Esmedunensis (abridged)Esmedunian Hymn (English translation)Vivat haec sodalitas, Decus Esmedunae, Nulli usquam posthabenda, Semper in caelum tollenda, Magnae virum cunae.
Stimulat ingenium Nos et virtus urget, Nec ignota sunt maiorum, Facta, nec aetas minorum, Segnior exsurget.
Nunc patronos memori Corde celebremus: Nos auxerunt largitate, Ampliarunt dignitate, His honorem demus.Long live this fellowship, The Order of Esmedune, Second to none on earth, Always raised up to the skies, A mighty cradle of heroes.
Knowledge spurs us on, Integrity inspires us, And not forgetting the achievements of our elders, No less vigorous a generation shall arise.
Now let us remember and celebrate our patrons: Enriched by their generosity, Ennobled by their greatness, Let us give them honour. Yearly school plays, school concerts and exhibitions of work continued throughout the 1930s, and the headmaster was able to report rising academic achievement at successive Prize Giving ceremonies. Gibson was also urging the building of a new Collegiate building in West Derby and in 1936 the Liverpool Education Committee recommended to the City Council the purchase of land in Meadow Lane. Proposals were set aside, however, as the international situation became increasingly tense during the late 1930s. School visits to Belgium and, perhaps surprisingly, to Germany continued.
In July 1939, with war being anticipated, the Collegiate sent a circular to parents outlining plans for the entire school to evacuate the city and relocate to Bangor, North Wales. The plans included such details as the times of trains leaving Lime Street station on the evacuation days and the clothing to be included in boys' luggage. School was recalled on 21 August, the Declaration of War on Germany was announced on 3 September, and the evacuation of pupils began the same day.
An article about the evacuation from the December 1939 edition of Esmeduna, describes a remarkably orderly and enjoyable move, "Few will forget that memorable journey with its queer fusion of unreality and vividness. With the courage and happy thoughtlessness of youth, the atmosphere was rather one of a holiday picnic than a sad parting."The School Under Evacuation Conditions', Esmeduna, December 1939 (p.9) The account details the warm welcome extended to pupils in Bangor, their dispersal to billets, the glorious weather and outdoor activities such as cycle rides, fishing and swimming. After three weeks organisation, with lorries and cars having transported vital equipment from Liverpool, lessons took place at the Friar's Junior School, the local Youth Hostel and the Twrgwyn Chapel.
The initial euphoria seems to have been short-lived. There were problems with billeting, and with parents inflicting themselves on harassed hosts during impromptu visits to their sons. After Christmas, the military inactivity of the Phoney War was encouraging many boys to return home to Liverpool. The Collegiate re-opened and two women teachers were appointed for the first time. Evacuee numbers became depleted ahead of a larger return in late Spring with a mere 50 boys staying on in Bangor. The evacuation appears to have contributed to Gibson suffering stress-related illness, and he never fully returned to duties.
Ironically the return occurred just as military hostilities began to increase. Air-raids took place from August 1940 and Merseyside was to become the most heavily bombed area of the country outside London. The Collegiate itself very nearly became a casualty of The Blitz. In 1936, the annual Founders Day Service had been held for the first time at the neighbouring St. Augustine's Church on the opposite side of College Road North. Five years later, on 4 May 1941, the Collegiate narrowly escaped a Luftwaffe bomb which instead destroyed St Augustine's.
In 1943, the closing of Oulton High School and the merging of its pupils into the Collegiate, was accompanied by the installation of its head, W. J. R. Gibbs, as temporary headmaster of the Collegiate until his retirement in 1947. Gibbs set up a House System during the evacuation and had formed an active Parents' Association. He also started Parents' Nights to foster closer links between the school and the home.
In 1947, Kenneth A. Crofts who had been vice-principal since 1938, was appointed headmaster. Crofts was a Quaker and pacifist, which may explain why he was not offered the headship in wartime, and although the author of the Collegiate School history, H. S. Corran, "presumes he did not approve of the Cadet Force",H. S. Corran, 'Liverpool Collegiate School 1908–1985 a Short History' (p.139) the headmaster's pragmatism, or his laissez-faire management style, enabled the school's CCF to continue unabated and, at a time when schools routinely used corporal punishment, the cane continued to be used for more serious indiscipline.
The Education Act 1944 abolished fee-paying at state grammar schools and ensured that the Collegiate took only pupils who passed the 11 Plus examination. Amidst post-war austerity, plans for a new Collegiate in West Derby appeared to evaporate, and Crofts believed that "the old building had many years of life before it still".H. S. Corran, 'Liverpool Collegiate School 1908–1985 a Short History' (p.119) Renovation work including electrical rewiring and the installation of hot water began in 1950. New showers were built at Holly Lodge, and from 1954 additional playing fields at Leyfield Road, West Derby were provided for rugby and athletics. Summer camps on the Isle of Man were resumed in 1949 and would continue into the seventies. Annual school plays and musicals continued to be an important part of Collegiate life, as were concert performances including guest appearances by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra who had rehearsed at the school before the Philharmonic Hall was built in the late 1930s.
Even before the 1950s concerns about falling standards were being voiced as pre-war expectations were changing and being challenged. Throughout the decade and beyond, the headmaster continued to measure academic success largely by the places his pupils secured at Oxford and Cambridge, while the academic success of the majority of pupils, despite Gibson's concerns in the 1930s, could be regarded as average. The rise in disciplinary incidents led to Punishment Schools taking place in two rooms when more than 40 boys were kept behind, each with two masters in attendance. A Swedish visitor to the school in 1950 regarded the Prefect System as similar to those in Sweden, though less democratic, but was surprised to witness corporal punishment being administered by Collegiate prefects. The prefectorial practice of 'slippering', whacking miscreants on the backside with a plimsoll shoe, would continue for two more decades. In 1959 the School Regulations were printed out and distributed for the first time. Initially this code of conduct included school uniform requirements, information about games, homework, school meals and a request for a School Fund contribution of 2/- (two shillings) per term. As more information about behavioural expectations were added, copying out the School Rules would outstrip lines as the preferred punishment for minor misdeeds.
At Speech Day in 1959, Crofts was reporting good A level and mediocre O level results, and that the average age of Collegiate staff had fallen with younger teachers bringing new activities and vitality to the school. He was also still hopeful that a new Collegiate could be built, complaining that the existing building was used as a playground at weekends. By 1961 all plans for the relocation of the Collegiate appear to have finally been scrapped, though the headmaster repeatedly seemed hopeful that work on a new building was about to commence.