In the 1890s, an increase in the rental income of property in the City of London led to a major expansion of the school ie building on land at the eastern edge of Holt, including several new boarding houses as well as new teaching buildings, library and chapel.
Gresham's began to admit girls in 1971 and is now fully co-educational. As well as its senior school, it operates a preparatory and a nursery and pre-prep school, the latter now in the Old School House, the historic home of the school. Altogether, the three schools teach about eight hundred children.
History
Gresham's School, sketched in 1838
The school
Gresham's School, Holt, was founded by Sir John Gresham, who obtained letters patent in 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I.[3] For its home he gave the school his manor house at Holt, which he had bought in 1546 from his elder brother Sir William Gresham.[4]
The founding of Gresham's was connected to King Henry VIII's suppression of the Priory of Augustinian canons at Beeston Regis in June 1539. The Priory of St Mary in the Meadow, Beeston Regis, established in 1216, had operated a school which John Gresham and his brothers probably attended, but the school came to an end with the priory, leaving no provision for education in the neighbourhood of Holt.[3]
The new school opened and was granted a Royal Charter in 1562.[3] By the letters patent of 1555, the school was called in full 'The Free Grammar School of Sir John Gresham, knight, citizen and alderman of London'.[4] The founder endowed Gresham's generously, placing its property in trust with the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers of London, and full estate records dating from the school's foundation are held at the Guildhall Library.[3] Sir John Gresham's endowments included his freehold property in Holt and Letheringsett, his wood and land called Prior's Grove, his manors of Pereers and Holt Hales, "with all and singular to the same belonging, situate in Holt, Sherington, Letheringsett, Bodham, Kellinge, Wayborne, Semlingham, Stodrye, Bantrye and West Wickham, in the said county of Norfolk", and also tenements called 'The White Hind' and 'The Peacock' in the parish of St Giles's Without, Cripplegate, in the City of London.[4][5] Close links with the Fishmongers' Company continue to the present.[6]
By his Will of 1601, Leonard Smith, a fishmonger of London, left £120 and all his goods to establish a fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and in 1604 'Mr Smith's Fellowship' was confirmed by the college, with the provision that "scholars from the Grammar School of Holt, in Norfolk" were to have preference.[7]
The school library contains the Foundation Library, a collection of books and manuscripts provided at the school's establishment in 1555 and later.[8]
On Christmas Day 1650, Thomas Cooper, a former usher of Gresham's, was hanged for his part in a Royalist rebellion on behalf of Charles II. His body was left hanging on a gibbet in the Holt Market Place.
For three hundred and fifty years, the school was based in what is now called the Old School House, or "OSH", the former manor house of Holt overlooking the Market Place in the town centre. In 1708, the school escaped a major fire which destroyed most of the rest of the mediaeval town of Holt. This resulted in most of the buildings now to be seen in the town centre belonging to the 18th century.[3]
In 1729, the Fishmongers' Company presented the school with "...a valuable and useful library, not only of the best editions of the Classics and Lexicographers, but also with some books of Antiquities, Chronology, and Geography, together with a suitable pair of globes".[9] By the 18th century, references to fish were hard to find in the court minutes of the Fishmongers' Company, and the company's main business had become managing its extensive property and administering its charities and trusts, such as the school at Holt and St Peter's Hospital, an almshouse at Newington in Surrey.[10]
For the period 1704 to 1750, Charles Linnell has analysed the 'Status of fathers of boys at Holt Grammar School' in his Gresham's School History and Register (1955): "Sons of gentlemen 10%, clergy 30%, professional men 5%, tradesmen 20%, plebeian 15%, unknown 20%".[11]
One of the school's 18th-century heads was John Holmes, appointed at the age of twenty-seven, a prolific writer of educational textbooks who led the school between 1730 and his death in 1760.[3][12]
In the 19th century, boys were strictly required to attend services at the Holt parish church, and in November 1815 a boy called Charles Loynes was "expelled for non-attendance at church".[13]
In 1823, the expenditure of the Fishmongers' Company on the school was £367, of which £158-10s-0d was for the master's salary, allowances and gratuities, £80 for the Usher's salary, board and lodging, £52-11s-6d for repairs, £22-12s-6d for taxes, £15-15s-6d for poor rates, £12-10s-0d for coals, £9-13s-4d for two-thirds of the cost of the school books, and £6-6s-0d for a School Feast which took place in June.[5]: 575
In 1836, the 'Wardens and Commonalty of the Art and Mystery of Fishmongers of the City of London' held an insurance policy for 'Other property or occupiers: Free Grammar School Holt Norfolk (Rev Benn. Pulleyn)' with the Sun Fire Office.[14]
In his History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London (1836), William Herbert says of the school:
GRESHAM'S. - At Holt, in Norfolk. For fifty free scholars, chosen from the town of Holt and neighbourhood, and admitted at six and seven years old. The nomination is in the Fishmongers' Company, in whom also is left the patronage and government of the school.[4]
Herbert also notes that the officers of the court of the Fishmongers' Company include "a steward of the Holt free school, in Norfolk".[4]
John William Burgon, in The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham (1839), after listing the estates with which Sir John Gresham endowed the school, says
Had the trustees of this school been formerly distinguished for the same vigilance which characterizes their representatives at the present day, it would not have been our painful duty to state, that of the extensive demesnes with which Holt grammar-school was endowed by its founder – sufficient, had they been properly managed, to have set it on a level with the first establishments of a similar nature in England – there remains at present but 162 acres (0.66 km2) of land. Its total revenue amounts to not quite 350l., about two-thirds of which arise from its estates in London.[15]
Burgon goes on, however, to add
Notwithstanding every disadvantage, this school, liberally conducted, and regulated by salutary statutes, is in a flourishing condition at the present day, and educates fifty free-scholars; to any one of whom removing to either of the universities, an annual exhibition of 20l. is allowed... Holt school... is an ornament and a blessing to the county, and reflects much credit on the trustees and its worthy principal—the Rev. B. Pulleyne.[16]
Traditional Emblems ie Coats of Arms of the Fishmongers' Company and those of John GreshamArms of Sir John Gresham and the Fishmongers' Company over the door of the Old School House on Station Road, Holt, as rebuilt in 1859–1860
In 1859, the Gresham Grammar School was closed while its site was substantially rebuilt and converted,[3] providing accommodation for boarders. It re-opened on 30 July 1860.[17]
In 1880, a commission was appointed to enquire into the City of London Livery Companies. When it published its first reports in 1881 the following formed part of a 'Supplementary Statement on behalf of the Fishmongers' Company' included in Volume 1:
In the case of Sir John Gresham's Grammar School at Holt, in Norfolk, the Company have from time to time supplemented the trust funds, especially for the purposes of rebuilding and repairs, the amount in which the trust was indebted to the Company, at a not very distant date, having been over 10,000£., and this notwithstanding the constant warnings of the Charity Commissioners that the Company were doing this at their own risk, and that they could in no case be permitted to apply any part of the capital of the trust funds in repayment of their advances; nor any part of the trust income, except within a period of 30 years.[18]
In the early 1900s, under an ambitious headmaster called George Howson (who had moved to Gresham's from Uppingham), the school expanded onto a new campus of some 200 acres (0.81 km2) at the eastern edge of the town,[19] while keeping the Old School House as one of its houses.[3] When Howson arrived at Gresham's, he found it in numbers much as it had been when founded in 1555: in 1900 there were only forty Holt Scholars, plus seven boarders.[3]
The New School (by the architect Sir John Simpson) was opened by Sir Evelyn Wood on 30 September 1903.[20] This consisted of School House (renamed Howson's in 1919) and the Main Building, including Big School. Woodlands was acquired and opened as a new house in 1905, the school's first swimming pool was opened in 1907,[21] and Farfield was built in 1911. The School Chapel was completed in 1916, during the Great War, during which one hundred and six Old Greshamians were killed.[22]
Under Howson's successor as headmaster, J. R. Eccles, Gresham's appears to have been one of the first schools in England to abolish corporal punishment. In March 1921 Eccles wrote to The Times and "condemned corporal punishment of any kind".[23] His letter is not however evidence for permanent abolition at Gresham's.
The Thatched Buildings, the gift of Eccles, were opened by Sir Arthur Shipley in February 1921.[24]
In the 1930s, there were three categories of scholarship in the senior school: Holt A scholarships gave complete exemption from fees, County Scholarships were worth £100 a year, and Fishmongers' Company Open Scholarships were worth £50 a year.[27]
Martin Burgess's memories of Gresham's during the freezing months of January to March 1947, the coldest British winter on record, are quoted at length in I Will Plant Me a Tree (2002). Not only was the winter icy cold, but because of fuel shortages, the school was unheated. Burgess recalls that "Periods were held in full overcoats and scarves and gloves. If it happened now the School would be closed, but such a step was not even thought of then. In any case, the roads were blocked... One day the School was called out to dig out a farm, or was it a small village? Hurrah! No periods! In the afternoon everyone prayed there would be periods, it was so cold. A man had died."[28]
Under the long headship of Logie Bruce Lockhart (1955–1982), there was a further period of change and expansion. Kenwyn, a new Junior School House, was built and opened in 1958. The bridge over Cromer Road was opened in 1962 and was initiated after the death of Kirsty, LBL's daughter, while crossing Cromer Road in front of Howson's. Tallis, a new boys' house named after John Tallis, Master of the school for more than thirty years in the first half of the seventeenth century, was built and opened in 1963 as were the biology classrooms and music rooms. Oakeley became the first girls' house in 1971 when girls were first admitted to the Sixth Form only.[3] The school became fully co-educational in the 1970s.[3]
There are now four boarding houses for boys and three for girls (see "Houses" section below), as well as a wide range of buildings. These include Big School, the School Chapel, the Auden Theatre, the Cairns Centre, the School Library, the Music Centre, the Central Block, the Thatched Classrooms, the Reith Laboratories, the Biology Building, the Armoury and others.
In February 2005, Gresham's School's 450th anniversary was marked by a service at Norwich Cathedral attended by the school's Patron, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and 1,500 past and present Greshamians. In July 2005, the Eastern Daily Press called it "a school which changed the world."[29]
When Philip John, formerly head of King William's College, arrived to take over the headmastership in September 2008, the Tatler Schools Guide commented "It will be interesting to observe the impact of mathematician Philip John."[30] He left in 2013 and Nigel Flower, the deputy head, took over as acting head. Douglas Robb, previously head of Oswestry School, took up the position of headmaster in September 2014.[31]
OG groups include the main OG Club, open to all former pupils, which publishes a magazine and has almost four thousand members;[32] the OG Golf Society, the OG Cricket Team, the OG Rifle Establishment (OGRE) which has its own residence at Bisley, and the OG Masonic Lodge.[33][34] The lodge was formed in January 1939.[35]
Most Gresham's students are boarders and live in one of the school's seven boarding houses. Four of these are for boys: Howson's (1903), Woodlands (1905), Farfield (1911), and Tallis (1961). Three houses are for girls: Oakeley (1971), Edinburgh (1987), and Queens' (1992), known as Britten until 2016.[36]
Britten, the school's third house for girls, was opened in 1992 and named after the composer Benjamin Britten. It is an extension of the former school Sanatorium, designed by William Henry Ansell. While at the school Britten was often sick and did much of his early composition in the Sanatorium, including his A Hymn to the Virgin.[39] The name of Britten was changed to Queens' House in September 2016, in honour of Queen Mary I, Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II. During each of their reigns, the school developed.[40]
Each house has a housemaster or housemistress and a house tutor and matron. There are house teams for team sports, as well as other house activities, such as evening prayers, "prep", and dramatic productions. Most houses have about seventy members.[36]
Senior boys and girls may be appointed as house prefects. Some of those are then chosen as school prefects and one in each house as House Captain.
A new house, Arkell, for day boys and girls in the sixth form, opened in September 2023.[36]
The Old School House was previously the main school building, then from 1905 to 1936 was the Junior House. From 1936 to 1993 it was a boarding house of the senior school and since then has been the home of the Gresham's pre-preparatory school.[3]
Junior Schools
The Old School House and new war memorial, 1921
The former Junior School of Gresham's was reorganised into a Preparatory School and a Pre-Preparatory School in 1984,[3] both on their own sites at Holt, with their own heads and staff. Like the Senior School, both are fully co-educational.
The Prep school has over two hundred children between the ages of seven and thirteen and takes full and weekly boarders as well as day pupils. Many continue into the Senior School. The school's Kenwyn House was once a house of the Senior School called Bengal Lodge.
The Pre-Preparatory School is housed in the Old School House and is a day school for approximately one hundred boys and girls between the ages of two and seven.
Curriculum
The school teaches most subjects of the mainstream humanistic curriculum. While only limited choices between courses need to be made for GCSE, in the sixth form at A-level pupils choose three or four subjects, and most combinations are possible.[41]
The school's year is divided into three terms, Michaelmas (early September to mid-December), Lent (early January to the Easter holiday) and Summer (Easter holiday to mid-July). In the middle of each term there is a half-term holiday, usually a week long. For boarders, there are also other home weekends.
The academic year begins with the Michaelmas term and ends with the summer term, so starts at the end of the summer vacation.
School sports
Gresham's School bronze medal for sports, dated 1900
Apart from its sports grounds for cricket, rugby, hockey, and soccer, the school has its own indoor swimming pool, squash, tennis, and badminton courts, gymnasium, sports hall, music school (the Britten Building), and extensive school woods with an outdoor activity centre. It owns a boat-house at Barton Broad and a shooting lodge at Bisley, as well as a shooting range at the school.
The principal school sports for boys are rugby (Michaelmas Term), hockey (Lent Term) and cricket, tennis and athletics (summer term) and for girls hockey (Michaelmas Term), netball (Lent Term), and cricket, tennis, and athletics (summer term). There is a wide range of other school sports, including badminton, soccer, squash, golf, martial arts, swimming, sailing, cross country running, shooting, and canoeing.
Gresham's is a Church of England foundation and was recognized as such by the Designation of Schools Having a Religious Character (Independent Schools) (England) Order 2004,[43] but it is open to all denominations and religions.[41] Services are a focal point of the school's life, with a morning assembly in chapel on four mornings of the week. Pupils not in the sixth form have an extra morning in chapel, while sixth formers have another tutorial period. The Saturday morning service is a choral practice, and Holy Communion may be taken on Sundays. There are also formal prayers in most boarding houses in the evenings.
Non-Anglicans are excused communion services on Sundays, and Roman Catholics attend mass on Sunday at the church of Our Lady and St Joseph in Sheringham.
Boys and girls who so wish are prepared at the school for confirmation into the Church of England, usually conducted by the Bishop of Norwich or one of his suffragan Bishops.
The foundation stone of the chapel was laid by the chairman of governors Sir Edward Busk on 8 June 1912.[44] However, there had been little progress by October 1913, when the plans by the architects Sir J. W. Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton were for a two-storey building seating about 600, with a high bell tower.[45] In the event, a smaller chapel was built between 1914 and 1916 and is now a listed building.[46] The Chapel bell, cast in Whitechapel in 1915, is inscribed with the words Ring in the Christ that is to be, Donum Dedit J. R. E.. The last words stand for "the gift of J. R. Eccles", who at the time was second master, later headmaster, while the first eight are the last line of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Ring Out, Wild Bells (1850).[47] The Gresham family motto, Fiat voluntas tua ('Thy will be done') appears on the chapel's main door.[48]
Before the Second World War, the school had an Officers Training Corps. During the 1940s, OTCs in British schools were renamed 'Junior Training Corps', and the school's JTC was amalgamated into the Combined Cadet Force in April 1948, which continues to provide military training.
The CCF's Army section is now associated with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment (previously with the Royal Norfolk Regiment, to 1959, and the 1st East Anglian Regiment, 1959 to 1964) and has some 270 pupils as cadets. About another 130 are in the CCF's Air section, and training takes place on Friday afternoon of each week. Activities include shooting, expeditions, combat manoeuvres, ambush and continuity drills, signals training, orienteering, climbing, kayaking, line-laying, first aid and lifesaving, motor mechanics and hovercraft construction.[41]
A Biennial Review of the Gresham's School CCF Contingent was carried out on 10 May 2006 by General Sir Richard Dannatt KCB CBE MC, Commander-in-Chief Land Command and Chief of the General Staff designate.[41]
Fees
The school's annual fees for the academic year 2022–23 are:
In September 2005, Gresham's was one of fifty British schools which were considered by the Office of Fair Trading to be operating a fee-fixing cartel in breach of the Competition Act 1998. All of the schools were ordered to abandon the practice of exchanging information on their planned fees.
Combined scholarships of up to 40% are available.[54]
Governing body
More than half of the school's governing body represent the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, who have been the school's trustees since 1555.[3] The chairman of governors (currently Paul Marriage)[55] was until recently always a past or present prime warden of the Fishmongers' Company. A previous chairman was David Cairns, 5th Earl Cairns, after whom the school's Cairns Centre is named.[3] Another prime warden, Sir Richard Carew Pole, was also a governor.[55]
The clerk of the Fishmongers' Company also acts as clerk to the governing body, and its meetings are held at Fishmongers' Hall in the City of London.[3]
The Grasshopper
The Gresham grasshopper
The Grasshopper is used as the badge of several Gresham's School clubs, and a long-established school periodical is called The Grasshopper. The green insect appears as the crest above the school's coat of arms, commemorating the Founder, Sir John Gresham, whose family crest it was. The Gresham Grasshopper is also used by Gresham College and can be seen as the weathervane on the Royal Exchange in the City of London, founded in 1565 by Gresham's nephew Sir Thomas Gresham, and the similar weathervane on the Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, which is modelled on the Royal Exchange's. The first Royal Exchange was profusely decorated with grasshoppers.
According to an ancient legend of the Greshams, the founder of the family, Roger de Gresham, was a foundling abandoned as a new-born baby in long grass in North Norfolk in the 13th century and found there by a woman whose attention was drawn to the child by a grasshopper. Although this is a beautiful story, it is more likely that the grasshopper is simply an heraldicrebus on the name Gresham, with gres being a Middle English form of grass (Old English grœs).
In the system of English heraldry, the grasshopper is said to represent wisdom and nobility.[56]
Development and external relations
During the celebrations of the school's 450th year in 2005, the establishment was announced of a Foundation to focus on encouraging legacies and donations for scholarships, bursaries and specific major projects. A Director of Development and External Relations has since been appointed, as part of a programme of reaching out to Old Greshamians, and gatherings are planned around the UK and overseas.[41]
Bibliography
Holmes, John, A New Grammar of the Latin Tongue... freed from the many obscurities, defects, superfluities and errors, which render the common grammar an insufferable impediment to the progress of education, by (1732, thirteenth edition 1788)
Holmes, John, History of England, Performed by the Gentlemen of the Grammar School... at their Christmas breaking up (drama, published in Latin and English, 1737)
Holmes, John, The Art of Rhetorick made easy... to meet the needs of the time when schoolboys are expected to be led, sooth'd and entic'd to their studies … rather than by force and harsh discipline drove, as in days of yore (1738)
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, 27 August 1825
Crockford's Scholastic Directory, 1861 (has article on Gresham's School)
The Free Grammar School at Holt, Norfolk in Report on the Charities of the Fishmongers' Company: Part I (City of London Livery Companies Commission Report, Volume 4, 1884) pp. 223–249[57]
Radford, Rev. L. B., History of Holt: a brief study of parish, church and school (Rounce & Wortley, 1908, BL 10358.f.38)
Howson, George William Saul, Sermons by a Lay Headmaster, Preached at Gresham's School, 1900–1918 (Longmans, Green and Co, 1920)[58]
Partridge, H. W., Register of Gresham's School, 1900–20 (Holt, 1920)
Gresham's School, Holt: Meeting New Demands of Life in The Times, August 6, 1920[59]
Simpson, James Herbert, Howson of Holt: A study in school life (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1925, 93 pp)
Taylor, C. K., 'Where Boys and Masters Pull Together: The Sixth and Final Article on the Schools of England', in Smith, Alfred Emanuel, New Outlook (Outlook Publishing Company, Inc., 1927), pp. 112–115
Auden, W. H., 'Gresham's School', in Greene, Graham (ed.), The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands (London: Jonathan Cape, 1934)[60]
Eccles, J. R., One Hundred Terms at Gresham's School (1934)
Eccles, J. R., My Life as a Public School Master (1948)
James Herbert Simpson, Schoolmaster's Harvest: some findings of fifty years, 1894–1944, (London, Faber and Faber, 1954)
Charles Lawrence Scruton Lidell and A. B. Douglas, The History and Register of Gresham's School, 1555–1954 (Ipswich, 1955)
Norfolk Record Office also holds some Gresham's accessions,[62] including a bundle of correspondence relating to the school from 1799 to 1810 between the Fishmongers' Company and Adey & Repton, including copies of statutes.[63]
^ abcdefghijklmnopqrS.G.G. Benson and Martin Crossley Evans, I Will Plant Me a Tree: an Illustrated History of Gresham's School (London: James & James, 2002 ISBN0-907383-92-0
^Lidell, Charles Lawrence Scruton, & A. B. Douglas, The History and Register of Gresham's School, 1555-1954 (Ipswich, 1955), admissions for the year 1810
^"GRESHAM GRAMMAR SCHOOL, HOLT" in Norwich Mercury, 25 July 1860, p. 1
^'Statement of the Fishmongers' Company', in City of London Livery Companies Commission Report, Volume 1 (1884), pp. 324-327. Retrieved 18 September 2008.
^"A distinguished gathering assemble at Holt today to take part in the opening ceremony of the new school buildings", Eastern Daily Press, 30 September 1903, p. 8
