Wisbech Grammar School is an 11–18 co-educational, Church of England, private day and boarding school in Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. Founded by the Guild of the Holy Trinity in 1379, it is one of the oldest schools in the country.
Chartered by Edward VI in 1549 as a grammar school for boys, for much of its history it offered a largely classical curriculum of Greek, Latin and arithmetic under the governance of the Wisbech Corporation. The school has moved premises several times since its foundation, being based in St Peter's Church, the old guildhall in Hill Street and on South Brink before merging with the Wisbech High School for Girls in 1970 at the present site on North Brink.Weedon, Robert, "Turning Pages of the Past" in Riverline 2004 (ed. Peter King), Wisbech Grammar School.
For much of the 20th century, it was a non-fee paying voluntary-aided school, but following LEA plans to remove this status and merge the Grammar School with two nearby secondary modern schools, the governors decided to become fully independent in 1983. Now a fee-paying day school, pupils aged 4 to 18 attend from the three counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Following the closure of the nearby St Audrey's Convent School, a significant feeder for the senior school, a new junior and infant preparatory school was opened in 1997, now known as Magdalene House.
Entry to the senior school at age 11 is based on a competitive examination. Pupils are also admitted at later stages, including sixth form. Pupils generally take nine General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examinations in Year Eleven (aged 15–16), and they have a choice of three, four or five A-levels in the sixth form. The majority of students go on to higher education following the completion of their A-levels at the end of Year Thirteen (aged 17–18).
History
Early history
Although the school has moved location on several occasions, each of its former buildings is still in existence. The school was founded by the Guild of the Holy Trinity in 1379 above the south porch of St Peter's Church. The Guild was a powerful force in the later Middle Ages. The historical name "Schola Sanctae Trinitatis De Wysbech" is still used on the school's crest, which is derived from the seal of the Wisbech Corporation (itself based on the former Guild seal) and features the seated figures of St Peter and St Paul. The first record of a schoolmaster dates from 1407 when one Maurice Plank was given leave to study at Cambridge University for two terms on the understanding that he would appoint an usher to teach in his absence.
Soon after foundation, the school moved to the Guildhall in Hill Street. A record from 1446 details how master Jacob Creffen was granted leave by the Bishop of Ely to collect an "adequate salary" from each scholar according to the "praiseworthy, ancient and approved custom".
Following the English reformation, the Guild of the Holy Trinity was dissolved and replaced by the Wisbech Corporation. The school was renamed and re-established by King Edward VI in 1549, who gave the school a charter "for the instruction of youth in grammatical knowledge and polite literature". The charter is still in existence, and is currently held by the Wisbech Museum.White, p. 24. The same year, land was given for the construction of a school house next to the Guildhall building. After the Restoration of Charles II, the school's charter was renewed with the stipulation that the Capital Burgesses be given the choice of schoolmaster and that the Bishop of Ely "forever shall have the right of visitation, reformation, and correction of the schoolmaster, as of the school aforesaid". In 1638 a benefactor, William Holmes, gave £400 to the burgesses of Wisbech to be invested in land, and the rest applied for the maintenance of two scholars at Magdalene College, Cambridge. In his will of 1656 Holmes directed that the whole yearly income of his 46-acre estate in Holbeach, Lincolnshire be paid yearly towards the maintenance of the scholars and the endowment of the school. Other land and property had been donated to the school in the wills of Thomas Parkes in 1628 and John Crane in 1651. Crane's estate included land in Fleet, Lincolnshire and an inn on Market Hill called the Black Bull.
In 1793, property developer Joseph Medworth purchased the site of Wisbech Castle, including John Thurloe's 1660 mansion (supposedly in a very poor condition) and the land surrounding it from the See of Ely, building the Georgian Circus along the bailey walls. As part of his scheme, in 1811 he tried to persuade the corporation to purchase the mansion and demolish the Old Grammar School building in Ship Street (now Hill Street) with the intention of building a new street through to the market place. The Corporation refused (it is usually assumed that the other burgesses intended to purchase the mansion for the same purpose after Medworth's death at a reduced price). As a result, Medworth demolished Thurloe's mansion and erected the present Wisbech Castle building in 1816.
An 1868 inspection by Henry Richmond of the Schools Inquiry Commission notes that the school was in a poor state of repair; the school once had many boarders, but this was no longer possible because the largest dormitory needed extensive repairs. As a result, attendance had fallen from 60 to 22 scholars. Richmond records that the upper boys were reading Cicero, and their knowledge of Latin grammar was "satisfactory". He also records the teaching of Greek, algebra, and English language, noting that French was taught as an extra. The inspector suggests that the reason for its decline may have been a nearby commercial school, and hints that the feeling in the town was that the largely Classical curriculum was "irrelevant". He also implies that the state of the building may have been the result of differences between the headmaster and the corporation.
The school was reconstituted in 1878. The school continued to use the former guildhall site in Hill Street until 1898, by which stage the medieval building was much altered and in a dilapidated condition. At this point, the school moved to an 18th-century house on South Brink. A fundraising campaign was launched to pay for the house, but after insufficient funds were donated, the cost of purchase was met by Alexander, Baron Peckover.White, pp. 93–94. The house and its grounds was originally intended to be the headmaster's residence and provide lodgings for a few boarders, but soon expanded to accommodate the entire school with the construction of classrooms and a hall. The central block of the 18th-century town house was used as a panelled library. An unusual feature of the old town house is the cupola on the roof, evidence of the town's sea-based prosperity. The new building included spacious school-room, class-rooms, laboratories and workshop, all furnished in a modern manner and was formally opened on 20 January 1898 and the key presented to the Headmaster Mr A.W.Poyser.
In his 1939 history of the school, headmaster H. Lawrence White opines that the purchase of this 18th-century house was a "grave mistake", as it was "constantly needing repairs" and was "difficult to warm". He suggests that for the eventual price of conversion, a purpose-built school would have been a more satisfactory decision.White, p. 95. Initial plans to build a dormitory for boarding pupils were scrapped, with a physics laboratory being constructed instead, effectively ending the tradition of boarding scholars.White, p. 98. The Education Act 1902 brought the school under the control of the Isle of Ely local education authority as a voluntary aided school.White, p. 100. By 1917, the boys' Grammar School had 64 pupils attending. Numbers had been swelled by an influx of boys from the Barton House School, a small private school which had closed in 1913.White, p. 99.
Modern history
The Education Act 1902 also made it a legal requirement for the county council to provide an equal educational opportunity for girls. A conference was held in October 1903 to discuss the founding of a girls' school, and by January 1905 Wisbech High School for Girls was established in Harecroft House on the North Brink. The house had been donated on a long-term lease for the purpose by Baron Peckover's family. Harecroft House had been built in 1844 by Algernon Peckover, and his descendants lived in the house until the death of Susannah Peckover in 1903, after which it was left vacant. The first headmistress was Beatrice Sparks, who was the first woman to complete the Oxford degree in mathematics. New schoolrooms were added to the High School in 1906, 1913, 1922 and 1936, when a mixed-use gymnasium and hall was constructed.Mahony, p. 7. This hall was, until recently, used as the school dining room and is now the school's library. Originally, the High School was able to take boarders, which continued until after World War II.Mahony, p. 6.
The boys' school continued to grow throughout the 20th century. 160 former pupils fought in World War I, of whom eleven were decorated and nine "mentioned in dispatches".White, p. 101. Nineteen former pupils were killed in action. During World War II, 272 boys and 26 staff from the Stationers' Company's School in London were evacuated to Wisbech, where they were billeted with local families and shared premises with the Grammar School for teaching.
From 1936 to 1959, the chairman of the governors of the boys' school was the local Liberal politician Alderman John W. Payne J.P., who was also, concurrently, Chairman of the Isle of Ely County Council Education Committee. The school came under Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely LEA when the two councils merged in 1965. Both the Grammar School and High School co-existed as voluntary aided schools until 1970 when they merged to become co-educational, with the Grammar School moving into the North Brink High School site under headmaster Dr. D.S. Anderson. Relations between the schools had always been close; the amalgamation had been planned for some time, and a number of new laboratories and classrooms had already been under construction on the North Brink site before the two schools merged.Mahony, p. 15. The school magazine Riverline was first published in 1971.
The school came under Cambridgeshire County Council LEA when the councils merged in 1974.
In the late 1970s, the local LEA and the local Member of Parliament, Clement Freud, were critical of the education system in Wisbech. At the time, entry to the co-educational Grammar School was at age 13, meaning that at age 11, all pupils attended the comprehensive single sex Queen's Girls' and Queen's Boys' Schools until an eleven-plus-style examination was taken by all pupils. At this point, academically able pupils were given the opportunity to move to the selective mixed-sex grammar school, with other children staying within the two secondary modern schools.
Plans to merge the grammar school with the two secondary modern establishments to form a comprehensive school were resisted by the Grammar School's governors; in a voluntary-aided school, the local education authority was responsible for its finances, but the governors and headmaster had autonomy over all other school policy. As a result of the governors' refusal, the LEA ceased to maintain the school, which became legally independent on 1 September 1983. Before the school formally became independent, its teachers were reported as having to "'make a very serious choice between staying with the local education authority which has employed them up to now or staying with the Grammar School' ... many of them were concerned about the number and calibre of pupils the school will attract". The separate Queen's Schools, meanwhile, were merged to become a co-educational comprehensive school; this became the Thomas Clarkson Academy.