Christ's Hospital Of London 1552-1598: A Passing Deed of Pity Review

A History Little Known: Four Centuries of Education in a Shropshire Village, by John Tumock, Cambrian Printers, Aberystwyth, 1996, pp. viii + 304, E20.50, ISBN 0 900439 82 3.

Christ's Hospital of London 1552-1598: 'A Passing Deed of Pity', by Carol Kazmierczak Manzione, Susquehanna University Press, Selinsgrove, Associated University Presses, London, 1995, pp. 232, $37.50, ISBN 0 945636 71 7.

Chantry Chapel to Royal Grammar School: The History of Kingston Grammar School 1299-1999, by David Ward and Gordon Evans, Gresham Books, Oxford, 2000 pp. ix + 212, E14.75, ISBN 0 946095 36 1

Five Hundred Years Enduring: A History of Loughborough Grammar School, by Nigel Watson, James & James, London, 2000, pp. 144, E28.00, ISBN 0 907 383 432.

The Buds of Virtue: The Story of Chigwell School, by David K. Ballance, James & James, London, 2000, pp. 144, f,28.00, ISBN 0 907383 22X.

Eton Established: A History from 1440 to 1860, by Tim Card, London, John Murray, 2001, pp. x + 212, E22.50, ISBN 0 7195 6052 7.

The six books that are to be considered here cover a large part of the history of traditional English education. Four were written by authors with very close links with the schools. One, on Loughborough, is the work of a man who does not appear to have been in that situation. The sixth, on Elizabethan CMst's Hospital, is the work of an American scholar writing a research exercise. The foundation of both grammar and 'petty' or elementary schools stretches far back into the Middle Ages, though it is often difficult to establish continuity between references to a school or a teacher at the same place at different times. However, there certainly were some institutions that subsisted over long periods of time, and the number of these increased in the fifteenth century. Pre-eminent among these as schools that always enjoyed some kind of national standing were Winchester, founded in 1387 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, and Eton, founded in 1440 by King Henry VI. Both were closely linked with colleges at the universities, Winchester with New College Oxford, Eton with King's College Cambridge. Each school consisted of a corporation of fellows and scholars and attracted other boys who paid fees and who, in the case of Eton, soon heavily outnumbered the foundation scholars.

Tim Card's Eton Established is a very domestic history. Card himself went to Eton at the age of 12, spent his teaching career there after Cambridge, and ended as Vice-Provost. In 1994 he published Eton Renewed on the period after the great changes initiated by the Clarendon Commission of the 1860s. Eton Established is a second book covering the 400 years between the foundation and 1860. Henry's original plan, Card argues, was to establish a school for local boys, but the project was expanded in imitation of Winchester and the ties with King's College strengthened. In addition to the 70 scholars there were also non-scholars. The average length of stay was six years, and a high proportion of the boys became priests. By 1452-53, when the definitive statutes were drawn up, the fortunes of the college were becoming closely involved with the struggles between Lancastrians and Yorkists. Much of the original success of the school was due to Henry VI's minister, the Earl of Suffolk, and to William of Waynflete, Provost of Etun 1442-47 and later Bishop of Winchester. Edward IV's policies towards Henry's foundation were capricious but generally hostile; in 1463 he petitioned for a bull to transfer the properties to St George's Chapel, Windsor, though this policy was later reversed. Waynflete saw the college thruugh to completion and the reign of Henry VII was a time of prosperity. Eton survived the Reformation without undue dismptiun and stood high in the favour of the first Elizabeth. Later its reputation rose under two distinguished Provosts, Sir Henry Savile (d. i622) and Sir Henry Wotton (d. 1639).

During the first century and a half of the school's history the Provost, who was head of the whole foundation, was a much more prominent figure than the schoolraaster who taught the boys: In about 1530 there were two schoolmasters and order was kept by praeposturs (prefects). Some Greek was taught at that time, b,ut not apparently very much. There may have been about 100 Oppidans, as they wouId now be called, non-foundation boys who lived in the town. The school day, as in all Tudor schools, was very long. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Latin grammars of Stanbridge and Whittington had been used, followed after 1530 by Lily's grammar adopted from St Paul's and later to be called the Eton Latin grammar. At the end of the century, under Provost Savile, standards were rising, and in 1613 there were more than i00 candidates for scholarships.

In addition to Eton three of our schools can lay claim to mec~leval origins, though, as is often the case, of a somewhat shadowy kind. The grammar schools at Loughborough, Kingston upon Thames and Worfield in Shropshire (see Jolm Tumock's A History Little Known) all had links with mediaeval chantry foundations. Chantfies, endowments to pray for the souls of the departed, were among the commonest forms of late medieval piety. They were flexible in size and structure and they were usually sited in existh~g parish churches so that there was no need for expensive buildlngs. Not all chantries included schools and many chantry priests never taught at all, but there were many who did. Their schools were useful institutions, and when the chantries themselves were dissolved under Edward VI, their disappearance left a gap in teaching provision that many local communities were anxious to fill.

The links in the case of all three schools are worth pursuing. At Worfield there is evidence of a chantry school hold in the parish church prior to 1523. There are later references to a school in the Elizabethan constables' accounts of the parish. Later houses and lands which had formed part of the endowments of the chantry of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church were granted by King ]ames I to two men in trust for the parislfloners who had probably put up the money for the purchase. A grammar school was established in 1618. It is extremely difficult to discover what happened to chantry properties of this kind after the Reformation. A good deal was concealed and a good many more or less corrupt bargains struck with the laudable objective of keeping local resources out of official hands. Finally, in all kinds of ways, many of them now impossible to unravel, something of what the chantries had possessed was saved for education.

At Loughborough, Thomas Burton bequeathed by his will of 1494 cemt'm lands to endow a chanlry. In the early part of the sixteenth century the properties were held by trustees for the repair of the town's bridge over the river Soar and for the maintenance of a grammar school, though Nigel Watson, author of the school history, says nothing about the later histow of the chantry or of what happened at the Reformation. The school certainly existed in the Elizabethan period, and in 1597 a body of trustees was established to repair the bridge, maintain the school and help support the poor.

At Kingston upon Thames the chantry chapel of St Mary Magdalene was founded by Edward Lovekyn, burgess of Kingston and citizen of London, and the first chaplain was installed in I310. The chapel is unusual because it was built on the London road at a considerable distance from the parish church. After the original foundation other endowments were received. There are references to teaching in medieval Kingston, but the anthor of the history, David Ward, considers that there is no evidence to link these with the Lovekyn chantry. When the chantry was dissolved the greater part of the property including the chapel was leased for 21 years to Richard Taverner. In 156i the bailiffs of the borough petitioned the Queen to establish a grammar school. By letters patent of 1561 and 1564 a school was created to be housed in the Lovekyn chapel and managed by the borough bailiffs. The income from the land leased by Tavemer was to be paid in part to the Crown and in part to support the school and the master. The grammar school was taught in the old chapel, which still exists. In this Kingston case there is no evidence that the school had formed part of the chantry, but its properties pr,ovided an endowment for the new foundation.

The suppression of the chantries is one aspect of the rehginus crisis that gripped Tudor England after i530. The sixteenth century was also a period of economic upheaval. The dissolution of the monasteries led to major changes in land ownarship. There was an increase in population combined with high levels of inflation. The 'sturdy beggars', often people displaced by economic change, loom large in contemporary polemic, and constant efforts were made to distinguish between the 'deserving' and the 'undeserving' poor. These problems Ioomed large in the towns and particularly in London, which was much the largest city in the country and which housed within its crowded limits the widest variations of pove~¢ and wealth. In the middle of the century the citizens, through the foundation of the four royal hospitals, made a concentrated effort to deal with these problems of poverty and social dislocation. St Thomas' Hospital and St Bartholomew's were to look after the sick. Bridewell was to care for beggars and vagrants. Christ's Hospital, the first haif-centmy of which is the subject of Carol Kazmierczak Manzinne's book, was to be a school and orphanage and was also to grant pensions to the elderly. It was to become one of the most famous and distinctive of English educational institutions. The whole programme of reform can be summed up in two brief quotations from the book; the author speaks of'a mechanism for social change through education and hard work' and of 'a fortunate convergence of Protestant piety and efficient municipal administration'.

A large part of this study consists of a computerized analysis of income and expenditure from the Treasurer's Account Books. Cbrist's Hospital was established in the old Greyfriars monastery in Newgate Street. The buildings had been given in December I547. They were later restored and children admitted. By November i552 there were 340 of them and by the end of the century over 600. Financially the hospitai was always on the margins of solvency, largely because the governors took in as many children as they could. In the last difficult decade of the century the accounts were in the red for seven of the 10 years from 1588 to 1598. The two largest sources of average income were from BlackweI1 Hail, the depot for the sale of cloth that the governors' administered (27.6%) and collections from the parishes (34.9%). Of smaller receipts rents formed 9%, legacies 8.4% and the oversight of carts and cartmen 6.6%.

The children were, Manzione argues, generously treated, well fed and looked after. On the expenditure side much the largest item was for nursing and other staff (34.8%). Since the hospital looked after infants and very young cltildren, this included wet nursing and care outside the institution; children were not brought into the hospital itself until they were four years old. The next largest item was for 'necessaries' (23.6%), a combination of many miscellaneous charges. Pensions for the poor and needy amounted to 12.6%; the hospital seems to have acted as a central agency for dispensing poor relief. Cloth and clothing for the children took up 10.3% and food 15.3%. Of this figure for food almost half (48%) was spent on wheat and bread, I7.1% on meat and 14.3% on 'spirits' (beer, wine and ale).

Some information is given about the cbildren, though the author says that a detailed statistical study covering information about death rates, gender ratios and average ages is being prepared. Some children were admitted who were not born hi London, and sick children were regularly taken in and given treatment. Foundlings were accepted and children were sometimes returned to their parents when their financial circumstances improved. In the I580s an average of 33 children per year left for apprenticeship or service, generally in London but sometimes in neighbouring counties. A very few children at this time went on to universities. Manzione provides a good deal of information about the governors, including a table of the govemors of all the city hospitals. They often served between five and seven years, and the work involv6d much time and effort. Many of them were leading city figures, including a number of Lord Mayors, and many of them, who were not Londoners by birth, were active in founding schools and cbarities hi their home towns and villages.

The last of our group of schoois, ChigweI1 in Essex, was founded in I623 by Samuel Harsnett, who was successively Bishop of Chichester and of Nor~/lch and Archbishop of York, and who died hi 1631. Harsnett was himself an Essex man, who had been presented to the vicarage of Chigwell in 1597. David Ballance's scholarly and attractively written book takes its title (The Buds of Virtue) from one of the archbishop's ordinances for the school: 'That menn seeing the buds of vertue in their youth May be stirred upp to blesse them and to praise God for their Pious Education'. There is no reference in Ballance's book to any earlier school at Chigwe/I; dais appears to have been a new foundation, not, as in the case of the other schools studied here, the development of something that had existed before.

Harsnett built a schoolhouse that is still in use. The endowment consisted of the advowsun of Tottingtun in West Norfolk and the tithes of the parish, estimated to be worth £60 a year. It was a small endowment from the beginning and one that did not increase greatly in value as town property often did. The archbishop's ordinances provided for two schools taught by a Latin master and an English master. The former was to be a graduate, 'sldlftd in the Greek and Latin tongues', the Iatter was to be able to write fair secretary and roman hands and to be skilful hi cyphering and casting accounts. Rather strangely it was Iaid down that no master in holy orders was to be appointed, though dais provision was often ignored. The Latin master was to teach 12 boys ftora ChigweI1 and two boys each from three neighbouring parishes free. The English master was to teach all Chigwell boys free and two from each of the other parishes. Ballance conjectures that in the earIy years there were between 30 and 40 boys from Chigwell in the two scbools pins a few from the other parishes.

After the major expansion of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods the two centuries from 1660 to 1860 were not a happy period for the grammar schools. Because they taught primarily Latin and Greek they did not meet the needs of many parents who wanted a more modem type of curriculum. Some schools ceased to teach the classics and became simple elementary schools. There was keen competition from private schools, many of them well managed and providing programmes of study that met the requirements of the day in ways that the grammar schools had ceased to do. The private schools also met a growing demand to educate girls.

During these two centuries our group of schooIs suffered the ups and downs common to all schools of their kind. In 1820 the village grammar school of Woffield had nine/ten foundation scholars plus a few boarders and fee-paying day boys. Latin had not been taught for 60 years, and little was offered beyond English and writing with accounts for a few boys who stayed long enough. Of ChigwelI there is Iittle to record. In 1816 them were 30 boys in the Latin school; by 1840 there was only one. The headmaster, Edmund Crooke, went bankrupt in 1863 and resigned. In 1865 there were i3 boys in the grammar school and 60 in the English school.

In the eighteenth century the Kingston school was doing little for the boys of the town. Richard Wooddeson, master from 1732 to I772, was in Iris way very successful. He had from 80 to 100 pupils, among them the historian Edward Gibbon who was at Kingston as a young boy for nearIy two years. But the boys who came were boarders, not town boys. Woeddeson, like many successful headmasters of his time, was effectively running his own private school within the grammar school framework. After he left the numbers feI1 rapidly. The Charity Commissioners in 1826 found no boarders and 14 scholars on the foundation.

Loughborough was unlike both ChigwelI and KAngston in that the charity of wlrich it formed part had a large income, though not much of it was spent on the school. In the eighteenth century there were periods both of success and of faiIure. Thomas Stevenson, who was appointed master in 1813, neglected the school, though the reading and writing schooIs that the trustees had set up in pIace of the former lower school atlracted many pupils. In 1828 the trustees instructed Stevenson to widen the curricuIum to include more modem subjects but he refused and the trustees dismissed him. However, he declined to go, the trustees took no further action and he remained in office until 1844. Removing the master of an endowed grammar schooI involved legal proceedings that might be lengthy, unceitain and expensive, and presumably the trustees decided not to risk it. In 1837 the Charity Commissioners visited the sclmoi and recommended that a new scheme be drawn up. Two years later a group of leading townspeopIe presented a petition to the trustees asking that this should be done.

The two centuries (1660-1860) of struggle for the grammar schools was also the period when a small group of 'great schoois' emerged, the nucleus of the public schools of the nineteenth century. Eton was the most prominent among them, though it was in many ways very different from the others. First, it was very large. There were about 300 boys in 1750 and nearly 800 under E.C. Hawtrey, Headmaster 1834-53 and Provost i853-62. In the eighteenth century the school became more aristocratic and Old Etonians were prominent in national politics: the elder Pitt, Charles James Fox, George Canning and later W..E. Gladstone. The collegers came from a wide social range, though conditions in College were bad and the boys much neglected until the reforms brought in by Provost Hodgson (1840-53). In 1841 there had only been 37 collegers against an estabIishment of 70. After the reforms College became much more attractive to parents, though as a result it became more socially exclusive. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Etun combined severe discipline with great personal freedom, wlrich could descend almost to anarchy. There were several rebellions, there were too few masters and some of them were of poor quality. John Keate, Headmaster 1809-34, had to teach over 100 boys. There was plenty of intellectual activity among the abler boys, and their first magazine, Microcosm, was produced in 1786-87 by a group that included George Canning. By Keate's time rowing had developed and cricket matches were being played against Winchester and Harrow.

Card speaks of 'the self-reliance and independence bred at Eton' and of the 'real benefits.., the beauty of the place, the warmth of lasting friendsltips, self-awareness'. Yet by I-Iawtrey's time the question had to be faced as to whether all this was enough to justify in a reforming age the wealth of King Henry's endowments. In 1860 Card writes: 'Etonians Iived easy and pleasant lives and.., most were singularly idle'. The headmaster had become a rich man and the assistants were wall paid. The endowments were managed in the interests of the fellows, who were generally superannuated masters and who contributed little to the place.

In 1861 a Royal Commission under Lord Clarendon was set up to examine the major public schools. Card's account of Eton ends there with a final chapter that is both retrospect and prospect. For the three grararnar schools, Kingston, Chigwell and Loughbornugh, the 1860s were also a time of reform. Sometimes the original impulses for change had been local. At Loughboreugh a new scheme for the charity had been approved in 1849 and a new grammar school built on the Leicester Road. Proposals were made in the 1860s for a grammar sclreoI, a girls' higb school, a higher grade elementary schooI and an elementa~ school for boys and girls. A reformed schem~ came into effect in 1875. It is a weakness of NigeI Watson's book that he does not explain very clearly the structure of the Loughborough foundation and the relationship between its component parts. At Kingston also the connections between the borough, the grammar schooI and the Tiffin boys' and girls' schooIs were complex and remained so until the grammar school became independent in the 1970s. This is all set out in a very lucid fashinn by David Ward.

At Kingston the Schools Commission inspector found 52 boys. Two of the four staff were not efficient, discipline was poor and the entrance requirements low. The premises were unsatisfactory and a new building was needed. Under the new arrangements of 1874 all the educational charities of the town were combined, and the total income was partly devoted to the grammar school and partly to the Tiffin schools, the heirs of a seventeenth-century educational endowment. A new building for the grammar sclmol on the other side of the road from the ancient chapel was opened in January 1878. At ChigwelI a local scheme of 1867 provided for the rehousing of the EngIish schooI in a separate building. Later it was merged with the village board schooI. Otherwise there seem to have been fewer changes at Chigwell than at many other pIaces.

The high hopes raised by the reforms were not always realized, and the years between 1870 and 1914 were not easy for many schools. Resources were often diminished by agricultural depression, which reduced farm rents and thus damaged sclmol endowments. At ChigweI1 the income from the Tottington tithes had reached £470 a year in the 1860s. By 1880 this had fallen to £220, and in that year some of the governors lent the headmaster, R.D. Swallow, £500 'against the security of his furniture and effects' to keep him going through the summer term. At Lougbborough the governors had to soil land and property in the 1870s and they lost heavily when their bankers failed. In 1883 the Charity Commissioners insisted on an increase in fees and they lent the governors money to clear their overdraft with repayment deferred for five years.

Headmasters sometimes suffered severely from the changing fortunes of a school. At Loughborough LB. Colgrove had 10 years of success followed by a period of decline. He resented what he saw as interference by the governors, and when he resigned in 1893, numbers had fallen to 54. After he left, he opened his own private school in the town in direct competition with the grammar school. A similar pattern of success and failure was recorded at Kingston under W. Elliot/nchbald (1883-1904). Numbers rose to 124 in i887-88, but by 1900-01 there were only 76 boys. There was keen competition from other schooIs, and in i903 the governors considered closing the grammar school. After an unfavourable inspection report in the same year Inchbald resigned, blaming in his farewell speech 'indifference and even opposition' in the Iocal community.

By 1900, however, there were definite signs of improvement. Some money had become available for science teaching through the grants of the Science and Art Department. Loughborough sought recognition as an 'organized science school', and laboratories for physics and chemistry were opened in 1895. There were similar developments both at Kingston and at Chigwell. The new local education authorities set up after 1902 establislred scholarships for boys from local elementary schools. Kingston received little help from Surrey. Essex made a grant of £400 and a loan of £1700 to Chigwell in 1907, wlrich paid for two new classrooms. By 1911 there were eight boys with free places, a substantial proportion in a small school (84 boys in 1912). At Lunghborough there was an initial prejudice against 'Board School boys', but by 1907 40% of boys came from elementary schools. Sometimes a school was helped by purely local factors. At Chigwell day boys increased in number as London suburbia expanded and IocaI transport improved.

There were other changes too which, though intangible, were equally important. There was a growing sense of 'esprit de corps'. L'mlcs with old boys were more activeIy cultivated. In 1909 Kingston held a great pageant to commemorate the 600th anniversary of Lovekyn's chapel. Much of this sense of loyalty was linked with the growing interest in games. These could become a fetish, but they did provide an interest for many boys and a slrung hnk with old boys and parents. Kingston, for example, became we11 known for its hockey; the old boys' hockey club founded in i907 was both active and successful. The history of the school contains a Iively section by Gordon Evans on school games; it is interesting even to those who do not know the place, and it shows what a large part games have played in schooI life over the past century.

The First World War Ied to great personal losses but it did not make much difference to the ways in which schools were run. David Ballance has included brief biographies of eight Old Clrigwellians who fell; they epitomize the sufferings of a whole generation. In the half century after 1920 numbers grew, new buildings were added and academic standards rose, though in the 1920s and i930s many boys stiI1 left at a very young age. At Loughborougb under Sidney Pullinger (1926-54) the majority of boys stayed until they were 16. Four or five boys a year gained university places out of an upper sixth of about a dozen.

AI1 three schools received a Board of Education grant and support from their local anthorities through entrance scholarships. At Kingston, Middlesex and Surrey County Councils increased the capitation fees they paid in 1934, a change which turned a deficit on the school accounts into a surplus. At Loughborough, the county director of education, Wllliam Brocldngton, was supportive and Leicestershire made a Iarge demand for places. After the Second World War Kingston and Loughboruugh retained their direct grant status while Chigwell became independent. However, Essex continued to fund boys who passed the 'eleven plus' until 196I, and Ballance suggests that the end of this arrangement led to serious problems in raa'mtaining standards in the late 1960s.

After 1945 there were ever slronger pressures to improve buildings and equipment; for example, the Industrial Fund helped to pay for new laboratories at Kingston (1957) and Chigwell (1958), while a new science block was opened at Loughborough in 1963. By that time traditional grammar schools were coming under strong pressure in a changing society that had ceased to accept many of the oIder patterns of discipline and behaviour. At Loughborough, Norman Waiter, Headmaster 1959-73, 'fought a rearguard action ag~fmst the prevalence of flared trousers and long hair'. At Cltigwell a rather traditionai ethos, strong on Christian and classical vaiues, was changed under Brian Wilson (i971-89), a head with a much morn ~managerial' style. When Wilson retired, the schonl had, Ballance argues, seen a transformation in which it had moved further than most.

Chigwell as an independent school after 1945 did not have to contend with changes in Iocai authority policy and the ending in 1975-76 of the direct grant. Indeed in its case the abolition of local authority grammar schools seems to have brought in more boys whose parents did not wish to accept the new comprehensive system. Both at Loughborough and at Kingston free pIacers formed a large part of the total entry--hail of it at Kingston in 1973, diough at Loughborough the county had reduced its requirements for free places in the 1960s. As the move towards comprehensive education gathered strength, the direct-grant grammar schools with their selective entry came to occupy an increasingly anomalous position. In Leicestershire the debate centred round the so-called 'Leicestershire plan', a system of junior and senior high schools, plarmed by S.C. Mason, Brockington's successor as director of education. The county's original proposals for Loughborough were that no pupils shouId be sent to the sch.ool until they were 14 and that there should be no academic seIeetion. Tiffs was not acceptable to the governors, and eventually in. 1967 a compromise was reached. The Loughborough boys' and girls' schools were to retain their direct grant status, while the local authority would make an assessment of the academic ability of pupils chosen for the schools. The number of pupils chosen in this fashion was to rise over five years to 50% of the annuaI intake. The governors decided to move to a four-form entry and to amalgamate the lower schodis of the boys' and girls' schooIs.

This so-called 'concordat' seems not to have worked very welI. The county high schools complained that they were deprived of able pupils and primary school heads became increasingly hostile to any kind of seIection. From the other side the grammar schonl feIt that it was being required to accept pupils of low levels of ability and the headmaster was critical of standards in the primary schools. These arrangements came to an end when the direct grant was abolished. The Loughburough governors chose independence because they believed that this was the only way ha which academic standards could be preserved. Kingston aIso opted for independent status. As a result the ancient connection with the borough had to be dissolved and a new goverfflng body created by a Charit:¢ Cormmission scheme of 1978. One important change at Kingston was the admission of glrls from 1978. Loughborough, as we have seen, had earlier combined the lower schools of the two schools on the foundation. At Chigwell the sixth form was opened to girls in 1973; full coeducation did not follow until 1997.

The abolition of the direct grant marks a major watershed in the story of English secondary education. It was ironic that, while the left wing was hostile to independent schools, the change actually reinforced the independent sector and made more places available to people who were prepared to pay for them. Sometimes those who suffered were boys and giris from modest homes; money rather than ability became the entry qualification to many good schools. From the point of view of the schools themselves the major question would be this: since independent sta~s meant higher fees, would parents be prepared to pay them?

In generai the last 25 years have been a period of success for the independent sector, and for the tbxee sehonls studied here. Growing prosperity among the middle classes and the fact that expenditure on education ranked ltigh among their priorities meant that they were both able and willing to pay higher fees. Some help for poor boys and girls was provided by the Conservative assisted places scheme, started in 1981 and ended by the Labour government in 1997. School governors themselves funded bursaries, though these were on a much smaller scale than the old direct grant. Large sums of money were raised from appeals; at Kingston, for example, appeals in the 1980s produced money for new buildings, which David Ward calls 'the most exciting architecture KGS had ever seen'.

The changing circumstances modified entry patterns. At Loughborough the supply of boys from the town's primary schools dried up and boys were drawn from a much larger area. At ChigwelI in 1996 boys of Indian, Pakistani and Sri Lankan descent constituted about a quarter of the school. Both buildings and facilities were generally improved and better academic standards followed. In an intensely competitive age it was important to do well both in the classroom and in outside activities. As these schooIs entered the twenty-first century, they could feel that they had adapted to major change with considerable sldlI.

This study has thus far been largely concerned with secondary education. To balance the picture one book among those reviewed, John Tumock's A History Little Known..., is principally the history of a village school in Shropshire. Something has already been said about the grammar school in the village of WorfieId, wltich lingered on until 1906. Several endowments had earlier been combined in 1878 to form the Worfield United Charities, and charity funds had even earlier in 1846 helped 'to pay for an eIementary school for boys and girls. John Tumock became head of this schooI in i983. Its history followed the normal pattern, though access to the charity endowments seems to have given a Iittle extra fiexibility. For example, in the i930s the l~ustees provided a room for evening classes and for woodwork and cookery.

The most interesting part of Turnock's book covers the headship of A.A. Matthews (1926-37). His ideas about the curriculum of a counlry school were set out in his book, Education for Life. A Country School Experiment. He developed a school garden, there were livestock and poultry clubs, a calf-rearing club and a bee club. The girls learned domestic science in a cottage in the village. The boys designed a new kitchen, and a boot club and a alothing club were set up. In October 1934 the vicar wrote in the parish magazine: 'I do not know where there is a parish that has as much right to be proud of its school as we in WonSeld have'.

In 1940 the numbers rose to 278, 130 of them evacuees. In 1954, as a result of the higher school 1caving age and a high birth rate, there were 329 chiIdren. At the end of that decade the senior boys and girls were transferred to new modem schools, 1earing a primary school of 146 with five teachers. In 1963 a new classroom block was completed towards which the endowment funds contributed. In the 1990s the income of the Worfield Educational Foundation was about £1250 a year, though only part of that might be spent on the school. In 1986 the I40th anniversary was celebrated, and in 1988 there was a week-long music festival centring rotmd the old Shropshire legend of fire Devil's Chair. In 1990 the school received a Schools Curriculum award to recognize its achievement hi establishing 'a broad and balanced curriculum enriched from the local community m~d environment'.

John 2hrnock's book brings out what a sinai1 village school can achieve across a broad range of activities. The book is well presented with a generous allowance of illuslrations closely related to the text. A school history lends itself very well to this combination of word and image, and most of the books reviewed here have tried to acltieve this result. They cover an enormous range from Etun at one end to Worfield primary sebool at the other. Yet alI of them have something in common. Behind them lies the impulse by the founders to do good to their communities. Clearly, in the England of the early twenty-first century, the educational scene is dominated by the state, but the state in this country was a relatively late starter and it entered upon a generous heritage of private effort. It is remarkable that, over the last 150 years, these private endeavours have persisted so slrongIy and have adapted to meet situations so different from those envisaged by the first founders.

John Roach
University of Sheffield
History Of Education, May 2004, Vol. 33 No. 3, 353-362,
Taylor & Francis Group