Monmouth School was a public (independent) boarding and day school for boys in Monmouth, Wales.
Founded in 1614 with an endowment from William Jones, a successful cloth merchant and trader in Elizabethan times, Monmouth School was run as a trust, the William Jones's Schools Foundation, by the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies, and had close links with its sister school, Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls. In 2018, the Haberdashers' Company renamed its group of schools in the town, the Monmouth Schools, and made corresponding changes to the names of the boys' and girls' schools. Further changes were initiated in June 2022, when the Haberdashers opened a consultation on merging the school with the girls' school in the town to create a fully co-educational establishment. In October 2024 the amalgamated schools were relaunched as Haberdashers' Monmouth School.
The school is situated on the eastern edge of the border town of Monmouth, adjacent to the River Wye. Nothing of its original buildings from the 17th century remains as the school was completely rebuilt in the mid to late-19th century. Later developments have included the Science Block (1981–84) and the William Jones Building of the early 21st century (2014). In 2014, the quatercentenary of the school's foundation was celebrated with a service at St Paul's Cathedral.
Established originally as a grammar school, by the early 1870s Monmouth was a member of the newly-formed Headmasters' Conference and had acquired the status of a public school. Between 1946 and 1976 it joined the direct-grant scheme, returning to full independence from 1976. A member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, the school's roll numbered approximately 650 pupils. The fees as at 2024, the last year of operation as a single-sex school, were £25,245 for day pupils, and £48,702 for boarders. The William Jones's Schools Foundation, which funds the Monmouth Schools on behalf of the Haberdashers’ Company, recorded an income of £20.5M against an expenditure of £24.0M in its accounts for 2020.
History
Years of foundation: 1613–1616 In 1613, William Jones, a prosperous merchant and prominent haberdasher, gave the Haberdashers’ Company £6,000, with a further bequest of £3,000 in his will after his death in 1615, to "ordaine a Preacher, a Free-School and Almes-houses for twenty poor and old distressed people, as blind and lame, as it shall seem best to them, of the Towne of Monmouth, where it shall be bestowed". His £9,000 in 1615 is .
Jones was born at Newland, Gloucestershire and brought up in Monmouth, leaving to make his fortune as a City merchant engaged in cloth trading with the Continent. Grateful to his livery company's support throughout his career, the motivation for his bequest appears both philanthropic and evangelical; the county of Monmouth in the early 17th century still retained a significant Catholic presence as local historian Keith Kissack noted: "the priority given to the preacher illustrates [Jones's] concern to convert an area in the Marches which was still, when the school opened in 1614, strongly recusant". The order for the establishment of the school was made, retrospectively by James I in 1616 and decreed "for ever in the town of Monmouth, one almshouse and one free grammar school".
The Haberdashers' Company purchased four fields in the sum of £100 for the Monmouth School site, receiving permission on behalf of Jones by royal decree in 1614 for this charitable purchase as required under the statute of Mortmain. By Jones's death at Hamburg in 1615, the almshouses, and the schoolroom and headmaster's house had been completed, although nothing now remains of the original school buildings.
The remainder of Jones's considerable bequest was used to purchase the manor of Hatcham and surrounding land at New Cross in Surrey, the rent rolls funding the salaries and running costs associated with the school, as well as paying pensions to the almshouse residents.
The first headmaster was the Revd John Owen, M.A. of Queens' College, Cambridge, appointed on a salary of £60 per annum. Neither Owen, nor many of his 17th and 18th-century successors, lasted very long unlike the school day which ran from 7–11 a.m., followed by an afternoon session from 1.30–5.00 p.m.
Years of uncertainty: 1617–1799
The mid-twentieth century school historian, Harold A. Ward, described its early history as "the precarious years". Ongoing religious controversy, exacerbated during the English Civil War, made the town a divided and uncertain setting for Monmouth School. Divisions between staff, and the financial instability, and remoteness, of its City Haberdasher patrons, who were compelled to make substantial loans to the Parliamentary Government that remained unpaid for decades and then also required to finance the rebuilding of their livery hall which was destroyed during the Great Fire of London, contributed to internal weaknesses. These difficulties continued well into the 18th century, and at one point, during the headship of the "morose and tyrannical" John Crowe, who was removed from his post after becoming insane, the school roll fell to just three boys. A source for information regarding the school in the mid-17th century is the diary of the school's usher, More Pye. The diary, extracts from which were published in the Monmouthshire Beacon in 1859 but which is now lost, records Pye's experiences in great detail from the date of his appointment in 1646 until his resignation in 1652. An example is Pye's entry for February 18, 1647; "Pd (paid) 6d ffor (for) wormeseedes and triacle for ye boys". A less parochial entry for November 11, 1647, records Pye's monarchist sympathies, "Ye King's Magy (Majesty) made an escape from Hampton Court, out of ye Armye's power. Vivat, vivat in aeternum".
Years of controversy: 1800–1850 Ward described the early 19th-century period of Monmouth School's history as years of "controversy". These focused mainly on three issues; relations between the school and the town, relations between the school, the town and the Haberdashers' Company and the Court of Chancery, which together were responsible for the school's funding and oversight, and attempts to expand the school's curriculum beyond the traditional study of Latin and Greek. The first issue saw the school perceived as part of the faction of the Dukes of Beaufort, premier county landowners, and the directors of the town's governance from their regional base at Troy House. Early 19th-century Monmouth had a strong Radical tradition led by burgesses such as Thomas Thackwell, and fuelled by the liberal positions held by local newspapers, the Monmouthshire Beacon and the Monmouthshire Merlin. The school's leadership was perceived in the town to be too close to the Beauforts, and Thackwell ran an almost fifty-year campaign against their attempts to defend the established order. The second controversy related to the governance of the school and another long campaign of attrition saw the School Lecturer lose responsibility for preparing its annual report, this being transferred by the Court of Chancery to a Board of Visitors. The last area of conflict arose between the school's leadership, which wanted to maintain the tradition of a curriculum that involved the study solely of Latin and Greek, and the Court and the Haberdashers' Company which sought to expand teaching to subjects such as writing and arithmetic. In a damming report in 1827 they condemned "the present masters, though so liberally paid, and having so little to do, consider themselves engaged only to teach Latin and Greek. A school teaching those branches of learning only will never be useful to a place of such confined population as Monmouth". Reforms introduced by John Oakley Hill in 1852, saw the establishment of Upper and Lower Schools, the former continuing to provide a classical education, while the latter had a curriculum focused on writing and arithmetic. Archdeacon Coxe, who undertook extensive tours of Wales at the end of the 18th and in the early 19th century accompanied by his patron and friend, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, recorded his impressions of the school in the second volume of An Historical tour in Monmouthshire, published in 1801. Describing the school as enjoying "a high reputation under the care of (the headmaster) the Revd John Powell", Coxe retells the mythical story of the school's establishment and records a "portrait of the founder, habited in the costume of the age of King James the First, with an inscription 'Walter William Jones, haberdasher and merchant of London etc.' is preserved in the school room".
Years of expansion: 1851–1913
In the early 1850s the Court of Chancery insisted on the appointment of an external examiner. His report of 1852 was not encouraging; "many of the boys appear so ignorant as to be a disgrace to their parents, still more than to their teachers". If the academic outlook remained bleak, the financial position of the school was transformed in this period. The sale of part of the New Cross estate to railway developers, and the vastly increased rents accruing from the development and expansion of London saw the Haberdashers' fortunes dramatically increase. The availability of funds led to the complete rebuilding of the school on its original site between 1864, the school's 250th anniversary, and the end of the century. Monmouth School's expansion was undertaken during the long incumbency of the Revd Charles Manley Roberts, headmaster for 32 years from 1859 to 1892. During Roberts's time Monmouth became an early member of the prestigious Headmasters' Conference (established by the Revd Edward Thring of Uppingham in 1869), a mark of its increasing reputation and status as a public school. The school's reputation for sporting prowess also rose, its rugby teams and rowers enjoying particular success. As a result of rising revenues from rents and investments, by the mid-19th century, Monmouth's endowment was one of largest of any school in England and Wales. To use the resulting surpluses, the original foundation was reorganised in 1891 to support a new girls’ school and an elementary school in the town, as well as a boys' grammar school West Monmouth School in Pontypool. As importantly for the school's development, the rule that limited applications to boys from Monmouthshire and the neighbouring counties was set aside, and applications were opened to the entirety of Wales and England.
Years of war: 1914–1945
Monmouth School's Combined Cadet Force was reportedly the last CCF in Great Britain to change its uniform to khaki from the traditional blue at the outbreak of war in August 1914. The Great War brought the award of the school's only Victoria Cross, conferred upon Captain Angus Buchanan in 1916 for his conspicuous bravery during the Mesopotamian campaign. Blinded by a bullet to the head the following year, he returned to Monmouthshire and practiced as a solicitor in Coleford, unveiling the school's war memorial in 1921. In total, seventy-six Monmouth old boys were killed on active service during World War I. The school's Bricknell Library, established in 1921, commemorates one of them, Ernest Thomas Samuel Bricknell, who died in October 1916 from wounds received in action at the Battle of the Somme.
Further loss of life occurred in 1921, when the Head of School, G. H. Sutherland, drowned in the River Wye during a rowing match between Monmouth and Hereford Cathedral Schools: Sutherland is commemorated on the sundial in the school cloister. The Second World War added the names of a further sixty-one Old Monmothians to the lists of the dead inscribed on its war memorial. During the War, Monmouth School hosted the entire school and staff from King Edward VI Grammar School, Birmingham, who were evacuated following the Luftwaffe's bombing of the Midlands.
Recent years: 1946–2024