Repton School
Repton School is a 13–18 co-educational, private, boarding and day school in the public school tradition, in Repton, Derbyshire, England.
Sir John Port of Etwall, on his death in 1557, left funds to create a grammar school which was then established at the Repton Priory. For its first 400 years, the school accepted only boys; girls were admitted from the 1970s, and the school was fully co-educational by the 1990s.
Notable alumni, also known as "Old Reptonians", include C. B. Fry, Harold Abrahams, Christopher Isherwood, Jeremy Clarkson, Andy Wilman, Roald Dahl, Adrian Newey and Archbishop Lord Ramsey of Canterbury.
History
The school was founded by a 1557 legacy in the will of Sir John Port of Etwall, leaving funds for a grammar school at Etwall or Repton, conditional on the students praying daily for the souls of his family:Through this private endowment, Repton School was set up as a charity, with early boarding pupils coming from Repton and the neighbouring villages.
The school was founded within the remains of Repton Priory, which were granted for the school in 1559 by Gilbert Thacker. The religious site had been founded in the 12th-century by the Augustinian order and had been in existence until it was dissolved in 1538 by Henry VIII. After dissolution, the Thacker family had lived at the priory until 1553. Gilbert Thacker destroyed the church, almost entirely in a day, during the time of Queen Mary fearing the priory would be recommissioned as part of the Counter-Reformation. Only parts of the original buildings remained when the school was established. These comprised: the footings of areas of the priory remain in some areas, uncovered during construction work in 1922; the bases of a cluster of columns of the former chancel and chapels; fragments of an arch belonging to the former pulpitum, moved to their current position in 1906; fragments of the door surrounds of both the chapter house and warming room. and largest surviving portion of the priory known as "Prior Overton's Tower", which is post-1437; largely altered, it has been incorporated into a 19th-century building.
However, following the bequeathment of the former religious buildings relations between the school and the Thacker family began to deteriorate due to a conflict of interest in accessibility. Almost eighty years later in 1642, the school commenced legal action against the Thacker family. In 1670, a wall was built to keep the two parties apart.
Within the first hundred years, student body numbers rose to 200, but they had fallen by 1681 to twenty-eight boys.
The social mix of the early school was very broad. Among the first twenty-two names on the register of Repton there are five gentlemen, four husbandmen, nine yeomen, two websters, or weavers, a carpenter and a tanner. During the 17th century, the school educated the sons of Earl of Chesterfield and Earl of Ardglass, Samuel Shaw and John Woodward, who was apprenticed as a linen draper before he took up medicine, eventually being appointed Gresham Professor of Physic.
18th and 19th centuries
In a letter from George Denman in the 1830s, there was a pupil-conferred role called "Cock of the School". A boy would be identified as the holder of this office after competing against likely candidates; once a boy was incumbent in this role, the younger boys deferred to him to do his work; writing in 1907, G. S. Messiter described the practice as an "ancient custom."
In 1858, a chapel was constructed on campus and later opened in 1859.
In 1865, a commission presided over by Henry Labouchere, 1st Baron Taunton investigated all endowed secondary schools in England, including Repton. The Schools Inquiry Commission published its findings in 1868. The research compiled helped aid the Endowed Schools Act 1869.
When public schools were attempting to reform, Repton's headmaster at the time lamented the shared tensions from all schools between local boys and boarders, stating that despite a sincere attempt to break down the barriers between them, he had had little success, and a substantial number of applications from "persons of good standing... and good fortune" had been withdrawn when told the boys were "of all classes down to the sons of blacksmiths and washerwomen". Due to this conflict, local village boys stopped attending Repton, which the headmaster at the time said was "mainly for the sake of the village boys... constant fear of their being ill-treated."
The first Committee of the Headmasters' Conference, appointed in December 1870, included the headmaster of Repton.
20th century
In 1907, a gymnasium was added, which is now grade II listed. In this decade, the chapel was enlarged, the Science Block, Armoury, Shooting Range and Swimming Bath were built, and the Priory 'Tithe' Barn turned into the Art School.Geoffrey Fisher became headmaster in 1914. In the early 1900s, a reforming master, Victor Gollancz, established classes in political education for the boys. The classes were open to Upper School members and enlistment was voluntary. Gollancz and D. C. Somervell conducted the lessons on “topics of parliamentary reform, the position of women, the future of the Empire, trade unions, individualism and co-operation in industry, the organisation of peace and a League of Nations, conservatism, liberalism, modern Ireland, Alsace-Lorraine and the Russian Revolution.” Repton was considered one of the first schools to offer civics classes in its curriculum. However, certain staff members opposed these classes, considering them as being radical. When H. J. Snape was invited to address the Civics Class on conservatism, the tension between Gollancz and Snape's opposing beliefs led to a “flaming row between them.” As a result of the affair, the War Office considered withdrawing its recognition of Repton's school Corps. This led to Fisher dismissing Gollancz and retaining Snape; yet, Fisher blamed Snape's misconduct as “a very discreditable campaign of personal abuse and violent language…against Mr. Gollancz.”
1,912 former pupils of the school served in the First World War, of whom 355 died in service. A war memorial was unveiled on major general Sir John Burnett-Stuart, director of military operations and intelligence, and dedicated by Edwyn Hoskyns, Bishop of Southwell on 1 November 1922.
Harold Abrahams, winner of the 100m sprint in the 1924 Paris Olympics, joined the school in 1914. Recalling his time at the school, Abrahams said he encountered antisemitism from other boys, often feeling bullied and alone.
In 1917, the writers Christopher Isherwood and Edward Upward began their time at Repton. They formed a friendship which continued when they both attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Around the same time, Arnold Cooke, Bunny Austin and David Cochrane also attended Repton.
In September 1920, the poet Vernon Watkins was sent to Repton. His gentle character initially provoked bullying in his early years; yet, in a 1923 letter sent from Watkins to Eric Falk, he expressed his fondness for Repton as well as a school crush on poet Rupert Brooke: “I can’t think of anyone except Rupert Brooke.” Upward reflected that “everyone was homosexual, up to a point, at Repton.” While at the school, Watkins was granted the Howe Verse Prize, the Lancelot Sayes Prizes for French & German, and the Schreiber Prize for his writing. Upon his departure, Watkins stated: “Leaving Repton was what I had expected it to be; - a ghastly affair which left me in tears.” The school has claimed him as "perhaps the best poet Repton has had".
In 1924, George Gilbert Stocks, a director of music at the school, set the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind to the tune Repton for use in the school's chapel. He took the melody from Hubert Parry's 1888 contralto aria "Long since in Egypt's plenteous land" in his oratorio Judith.
The writer Roald Dahl attended in the 1930s.He later stated that he "couldn't get over it" and has "never got over it." His semi-autobiographical Boy describes his negative experience with physical altercations between students, and of a pupil by headmaster Fisher. But Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, has pointed out he was mistaken: the beating was in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton, and the headmaster concerned was John Christie, Fisher's successor. In his 1984 autobiography, Dahl states that when he was a young fag, he was instructed to warm toilet seats for older boys at the school. He was also, along with other boys at the school, used as a product tester for Cadbury chocolate bars. Dahl claims that this was the inspiration for his book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Second World War and after
The headmaster from 1937 to 1943 was H. G. Michael Clarke, who left the school to pursue an ecclesiastical career and became Provost of Birmingham Cathedral. He led the school during one of the most difficult periods of its history, when mounting debts and falling numbers, together with the effects of the war, led to questions as to the continuing viability of the institution; Clarke was obliged to close departments and two houses. The school owed £50,000 and, in 1941, the Board of Education said its "future is doubtful".In the Second World War, 188 former members of the school died serving in the armed forces. Airmen were billeted in Mitre House during the war. In 1948, a tablet extension was commissioned for the Derbyshire WWI Memorial in order to include WWII casualties. The extension was inaugurated in a ceremony led on 10 July 1949, unveiled by lieutenant general Sir Charles Gairdner and dedicated by former Geoffrey Fisher, by then Archbishop of Canterbury.
Numbers attending the school recovered in the late 1940s, such that The Cross was able to reopen in 1945 and Latham House in 1947. By 1957, the school was in better health: full with 470 pupils.
1957 saw the 400 year centenary of the school, celebrated with a royal visit from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. A new chemistry block and workshops were added within the precinct, as well as extensive alterations to the science block. John Gammell took office as headmaster in 1968 and during his tenure girls began to be educated at Repton. It started with the arrival of two girls in 1970. By 1979, the first purpose-built girls' boarding house was opened.
Hazing is recorded as having taken place at Repton into the late 20th century. Jeremy Clarkson attended the school, later noting that he had suffered extreme hazing by other students, including being plunged into an ice pool and having his trousers cut in half. He was later expelled for "drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance" of himself. He has stated that this conduct included doing car stunts on the sports pitches, smoking in the chapel, filling all the locks on the premises with Polyfilla, and attending lessons naked from the waist down.
Likewise, fagging continued in the 1980s when cricketer Chris Adams was at the school; he subsequently observed, "The ingrained hierarchy whereby the older boys would subject the younger pupils to a lot of misery through the system of fagging. It was basically a system of slavery and I hated seeing the young lads literally trembling with fear".
In the early 1980s, the old Sanatorium was converted into a Music School. Due to increasing numbers of female pupils in the 1990s, headmaster Graham Jones spearheaded the construction of girls' houses. Two boys boarding houses were closed and their occupants were reconfigured into a single new house, School House.