GRESHAM'S SCHOOL

'Gresham’s School' is an independent coeducational boarding school at Holt in North Norfolk, England, founded in the year 1555, a member of the HMC.

History

Big School, 1903, architect Sir John Simpson

The School

Gresham's School was established at Holt by Sir John Gresham in 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I.^[1] 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^[2].
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, 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 vicinity of Holt.
The new school opened and was granted a Royal Charter in 1562. Early records are in Latin and call the school ''Libera Schola Grammaticalis Johannis Gresham Militis''. 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. Close links with the Fishmongers' Company continue to this day^[3].
The School Library contains the Foundation Library, a collection of books and manuscripts provided at the school's establishment in 1555 and later.^[4]
On Christmas Day 1650, the Reverend Thomas Cooper, MA, 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 Holt's 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 eighteenth century.
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.^[5]
The Old School was rebuilt and converted in 1859. 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 two hundred acres at the eastern edge of the town^[6], while keeping the Old School House as one of its houses. 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.
The New School (by the architect Sir John Simpson) was opened by Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood on 30 September, 1903. 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, and Farfield built in 1911. The School Chapel was completed in 1916, during the Great War, during which one hundred Old Greshamians were killed.^[7]
The school was evacuated to Newquay in Cornwall during the Second World War, between June 1940 and March 1944.
Under the long headship of Logie Bruce Lockhart (1955-1982), there was a further period of change and expansion. Tallis (a new boys' house named after a 17th century Master of the school) was built and opened in 1961 and Oakeley (the first girls' house) in 1971, when girls were first admitted to the Sixth Form only. The school became fully co-educational in the early 1980s.
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''"^[8].

Headmasters

See 'List of Masters of Gresham's School'.

Old Greshamians

See 'List of notable Old Greshamians'.

Houses

Farfield

Most Gresham's students are boarders and live in one of the school's seven 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 (1984), and Britten (1992).
Each house has a house-master or house-mistress 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 are around seventy strong.]].^[9]
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.
The Old School House was previously the whole school, then from 1905 to 1936 the Junior House, then from 1936 to 1993 a boarding house of the Senior School and is now the home of the Gresham's pre-preparatory school.

Boys' houses

House	Housemaster	House Tutor	Matron
'Howson's'	Mr J.P.B. Martin BSc	Mr R. Hensen BCom	Mrs M. Dimsdale
'Farfield'	Mr J.R.P. Thomson BEng	Mr D.A. Stanworth BA, MMus	Mrs J. Straton
'Tallis'	Mr P.C. Farmer-Wright BSc	Mr P.J. Watson BA	Mrs B. Aldridge
'Woodlands'	Mr F.J.V. Retter BA	Mr G.D. Bartle BSc	Mrs C. Day

Girls' houses

House	Housemistress	House Tutor	Matron
'Edinburgh'	Mrs S. Radley BEd	Miss L.B. Roberts BA, ARCM	Mrs F. Daplyn
'Britten'	Mrs J.E. Moore	Miss K. Lahana BSc	Mrs V. Payne
'Oakeley'	Miss F.M.A. Gathercole BA OG	Mrs K.E. Curtis BA	Mrs D. Powles

Junior Schools

The Old School House and new war memorial, 1921

The former Junior School of Gresham's was reorganized into a Preparatory School and a Pre-Preparatory School in 1984, both on their own sites at Holt, with their own heads and staff. Like the Senior School, both are fully co-educational.
The Preparatory school has over two hundred children between the ages of eight 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 one hundred boys and girls between the ages of three and eight.

Admission to the school

In most cases, admission to Gresham's depends on success at the Common Entrance Examination, usually taken between the ages of eleven and thirteen. Common Entrance has three compulsory core subjects, English, Maths and Science, and other papers can be chosen from French, German, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Geography, History, and Religious Studies.
The school also has its own entrance examination for candidates from maintained schools.

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.

★ Classical Civilization, Latin and Greek

★ Modern Languages: French, German, Russian, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese

★ English language and literature

★ Mathematics

★ Physics, Chemistry, Biology

★ Electronics, Computing, Graphical Communication, Design & Technology

★ History, Geography, Politics, Economics, Business Studies

★ Religious Studies

★ Art, Theatre Studies, Music
The school has been an International Baccalaureate World School (IB code 003433), offering the IB Diploma Programme, since February 2007.^[10]
The aim of the school is to give a good all-round education and to prepare pupils for university entry and for other careers, such as the armed forces . Most Greshamians move on to top British universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Bristol, Durham and Edinburgh.

School terms

The school's year is divided into three terms, Michaelmas (early September to mid December), Lent (early January to the Easter holiday) and Summer (the 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 holiday.

School sports

A cricket ball

Apart from its sports grounds for cricket, rugby football, hockey, and soccer, the school has its own indoor swimming pool, squash, tennis and badminton courts, gymnasium and extensive school woods. It owns a boat-house at Barton Broad and a shooting lodge at Bisley, as well as a shooting range at the school.
An Old Greshamian was a member of the gold-medal winning British hockey squad at the 1988 Summer Olympics and of the bronze-medal winning team at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Another OG was for many years the British number one squash player and now heads the world Professional Squash Association. In the field of rifle-shooting, Gresham's has been one of the top ten schools in England for about forty years, and an OG won a shooting Gold Medal in the 2006 Commonwealth Games at Melbourne. In the field of winter sports, the 11th Earl of Northesk won an Olympic medal for toboganning (then called "skeleton") in 1928. Brother and sister Ralph and Natasha Firman are both racing drivers, and Natasha was the winner of the inaugural Formula Woman championship in 2004.
The principal school sports for boys are rugby football (Michaelmas Term), hockey (Lent Term), and cricket (Summer Term). There is a wide range of other school sports, including tennis, badminton, golf, soccer, squash, martial arts, swimming, riding, sailing, cross-country running, shooting and canoeing. As an alternative to formal sports, Gresham's students may take part in 'School Works', chiefly forestry activities in the extensive woodland attached to the main school campus.

Religion

Gresham's is a Church of England foundation, but the school is open to all denominations and religions. Services are a focal point of the School's life, with a morning assembly in Chapel on four mornings of the week and in Big School on the other three. The Saturday morning service is a choral practice, and Holy Communion may be taken on Sundays. There are also formal prayers in each boarding house 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.
If wished, boys and girls may be prepared at the School for Confirmation into the Church of England, which is usually conducted by the Bishop of Norwich or one of his suffragan Bishops.
The school was designated as having a Church of England religious character by the Designation of Schools Having a Religious Character (Independent Schools) (England) Order 2004 (No 72).^[11]
The tune called ''Woodlands'', the usual setting for the hymn Lift Up Your Hearts!, was composed for the school in 1916 by Walter Greatorex, a Gresham's music master.
The foundation stone of the Chapel was laid by the chairman of governors, Sir Edward Busk, on 8 June 1912^[12]. The Chapel bell, cast in Whitechapel in 1915, is inscribed with the words ''Ring in the Christ that is to be'', which are the last line of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem ''Ring Out, Wild Bells'' (1850).

Out of school activities

Love's Labour's Lost by Gresham's, c. 1914

There is a School Orchestra, a School Choir, a Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme (more than five hundred Gold Awards have been achieved since its inception in 1972), and a large number of school clubs, such as the Debating Society, the Natural History Society, the Sailing Club, and the Chess Club.
North Norfolk Divers, a branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club, is based at the school.
A school play is produced at the end of every Summer Term, and each house also produces a play once a year. There are also many visits to concerts, plays and other outside events.

Combined Cadet Force

Military training is provided by the Gresham's School contingent of the Combined Cadet Force, the Army section of which is now associated with the Royal Anglian Regiment, previously with the Royal Norfolk Regiment. Some four hundred students are cadets (about 270 in the Army section) and training takes place on one afternoon of each week.
Activities include shooting, expeditions, combat manoevres, ambush and continuity drills, signals training, orienteering, climbing, kayaking, line-laying, first aid and lifesaving, motor mechanics, and hovercraft construction.
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.

Scholarships

A range of scholarships are available, giving a reduction in school fees. These include Open Academic Scholarships, Music, Art and Drama Scholarships, Lockhart Academic Scholarships, Edinburgh Scholarships, Fishmongers' Company Open Scholarships and Fishmongers' Art Scholarships, Sports Scholarships and All Rounder Scholarships. There is also an award called the 450th Anniversary Boarding Award.
Examinations for Academic Scholarships are held every November for admission the following September, while Scholarsips in Music, Sport, Art, and Drama are awarded on the basis of interviews and practical work.
Sixth Form Scholarships for Sport, Music, Art, and academic distinction are awarded in December for the two years beginning the following September and are open to external and internal candidates.
The maximum value of a Scholarship is half of the school's fees, but the value may be increased by a bursary in cases of financial need.
Roughly one in four Gresham's pupils hold a scholarship, and about one in eight receive a bursary for financial need.
Enquiries about Scholarships should be made to The Registrar, Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk NR25 6EA (registrar@greshams.com).

Fees

The school's annual fees for the academic year 2006-07 are:

★ Senior School boarders: £21,705

★ Senior School non-boarders: £16,815

★ Preparatory School boarders: £15,840

★ Preparatory School non-boarders: £12,150

★ Pre-preparatory School Year 3: £6,660

★ Pre-preparatory School Year 2: £6,330

★ Pre-preparatory School Year 1: £6,000
In September 2005, Gresham's was one of the leading British schools (including Ampleforth, Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Haileybury, Marlborough, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Stowe, Wellington and Winchester) 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.

Governing body

Arms of the Fishmongers' Company

More than half of the school's Governing Body represent the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, who have been the school's trustees since 1555. The Chairman of Governors (currently Mr A.N.G. Duckworth-Chad, D.L., a Norfolk landowner) is always a past or present Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company. The previous Chairman was the late Admiral Earl Cairns. The present Prime Warden, Sir Richard Carew Pole, is also a governor.
The governing body includes a representative of Cambridge University, currently Lady Perry of Southwark, and one of Norfolk County Council, and it also seeks to include some distinguished Old Greshamians.
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.
'External link:'

★ List of Governors

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, 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. A beautiful story, it is more likely that the grasshopper is simply an heraldic rebus 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.

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.

Gresham's bibliography

★ ''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 John Holmes (1732, thirteenth edition 1788)

★ ''History of England, Performed by the Gentlemen of the Grammar School... at their Christmas breaking up'', by John Holmes (drama, published in Latin and English, 1737)

★ ''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'', by John Holmes (1738)

★ ''The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction'', 27 August 1825

★ ''Crockford's Scholastic Directory, 1861'' (has article on Gresham's School)

★ ''History of Holt: a brief study of parish, church and school'' by the Rev. L.B. Radford (Rounce & Wortley, 1908)

★ ''Sermons by a Lay Headmaster, Preached at Gresham's School, 1900-1918'' by George William Saul Howson (Longmans, Green and Co, 1920)

★ ''One Hundred Terms at Gresham's School'' by J. R. Eccles (1934)

★ ''My Life as a Public School Master'' by J. R. Eccles (1948)

★ ''Schoolmaster's Harvest: some findings of fifty years, 1894-1944'' by James Herbert Simpson, (London, Faber and Faber, 1954)

★ ''The History and Register of Gresham's School, 1555-1954'' by Charles Lawrence Scruton Lidell and A.B. Douglas (Ipswich, 1955)

★ ''A Catalogue of the Foundation Library of Gresham's School'', by Peter John Lee (Holt, 1965)

★ ''Stuff and Nonsense: Observations of a Norfolk Scot'' by Logie Bruce Lockhart (The Larks Press, 1981) ISBN 0 948400 40 4

★ ''Gresham's in Wartime'' by Philip S. Newell and Bernard Sankey (1988)

★ ''When Heroes Die'' by Sue Smart (Breedon Books, 2001) ISBN 1-85983-256-3

★ ''I Will Plant Me a Tree: an Illustrated History of Gresham's School'' by S.G.G. Benson and Martin Crossley Evans (James & James, London, 2002) ISBN 0-907383-92-0

References

1. ''I Will Plant Me a Tree: an Illustrated History of Gresham's School'' by S.G.G. Benson and Martin Crossley Evans (James & James, London, 2002) ISBN 0-907383-92-0
2. See John Gresham: The Gresham Family
3. The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers official site (accessed 15 August 2007)
4. ''A Catalogue of the Foundation Library of Gresham's School'', by P.J. Lee (Holt, 1965)
5. ''John Holmes (1702/3–1760), schoolmaster and writer on education'' by David Stoker in Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004)
6. Image of main Gresham's campus at art-e-mail.com (accessed 29 August 2007)
7. ''When Heroes Die'' by Sue Smart (Breedon Books, 2001) ISBN 1-85983-256-3
8. Eastern Daily Press, Norwich, July 2005
9. Gresham's School online
10.
★ Gresham's at the International Baccalaureate Organization (accessed 15 August 2007)
11. Designation of Schools Having a Religious Character (Independent Schools) (England) Order 2004 (accessed 15 August 2007)
12. The Times of London, Monday, 10 June, 1912, page 4
13. Guildhall Library Manuscripts Section (Accessions 7282, 7789A/1-2, 7791/1-4, 20341 and 20342/1-2)
14. Norfolk Record Office
15. Gresham's accessions, reference NRA 27820 Repton (accessed 15 August 2007)

★ ''The History and Register of Gresham's School, 1555-1954'' (Ipswich, 1955)

★ Gresham's Preparatory School

External links

★ Gresham's School online - Official site

★ ISI Inspection Report on Gresham’s School, 2004

★ The Auden Theatre, Gresham's School

★ Auden Theatre & school location map

★ Gresham's at art-e-mail.com

★ Map of Holt

★ Woodlands House (Gresham's) online

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