Wimbledon College
Wimbledon College is a government-maintained, voluntary-aided, Jesuit Catholic secondary school and sixth form for boys aged 11 to 19 in Wimbledon, London.
The college was founded in 1892 "for improvement in living and learning for the greater glory of God and the common good." It is affiliated with the Sacred Heart Church and Donhead Preparatory School, its former feeder preparatory school. It is also affiliated with the Ursuline High School, the college's sister school, who have worked in partnership since 1986.
History
Early beginnings
The school was founded on 18 January 1892, initially at the site of No. 3 Cranbrook Road. On its first day, only one student, Thomas Lloyd, was in attendance; his brother William had fallen ill. After the first academic year, six more students joined the Lloyd brothers. During this period the school moved twice, first to a property on Darlaston Road and then to a building adjoining the All England Lawn Tennis Courts. Finally, in 1893. the college acquired the former site of Wimbledon School on Edge Hill, aided by the financial backing of Edith Arendrup. Lessons began at this site on 26 June 1893; the college has not moved since.In September 1898, the Wimbledon College Army Department was established, which trained young men for entrance into the Royal Military Academies at Sandhurst and Woolwich.
During the First World War, the college lost 129 former pupils, including Maurice Dease and Gerald Robert O'Sullivan, both of whom received the Victoria Cross. On 18 February 1922, the war memorial at the rear of the chapel and the memorial stained glass window at the front, behind the altar, were unveiled.
In 1921, John Manning, the prefect of studies, which was then the formal title for Wimbledon College's head master, introduced the house system with three houses, leading to an expansion of extracurricular activities. This was complemented with the development of a senior prefect system, with six boys managing the day-to-day discipline of the school. In 1929, eight acres of field beside Coombe Lane, in Raynes Park, was bought as a venue for the college's sporting activities; it has been in use for these purposes ever since.
In 1933, due to the growing number of pupils, the decision was made to buy Donhead Lodge, across the road from the college on Edge Hill, and establish a preparatory school there. The seventy-two pupils from Lower Preparatory, Preparatory, and Elements were taken from the college and settled at the newly instituted Wimbledon College Preparatory School.
Under Sinnott
John Sinnott was inaugurated as the prefect of studies in 1937; he was the first former student of the college to hold that office. Sinnott is widely seen as having pioneered the college and wider Catholic education in Britain during his thirteen years as prefect of studies, over which time he developed a careers bureau, a college orchestra, academic interhouse competitions and violin playing. Acting on concerns of fire hazards due to crowded corridors and underfunded laboratories in a 1938 inspection, and on the appetite from inspectors for his plans to expand the provision of geography lessons, Sinnott made plans to expand the college with new facilities; however, he was frustrated by the outbreak of the World War II, when tight restrictions were placed on the use of steel and timber.During the Second World War, the functioning of the college was much more disrupted than in World War I. The college and Donhead both had cellars which, with minor adjustments, were approved by local air raid wardens. Sandbags were brought in and timber frames used to reinforce the ceilings. Since both schools were outside the evacuation area, school was allowed to proceed. Three weeks after the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, the new school term began, albeit with a drop in attendance of one in five pupils. Because the games pitch was distant from the bomb shelters, games lessons were cancelled during the war and break was shortened. The college's swimming pool provided valuable water for the local fire brigade and, in the local community, the school acted as a first aid centre.
On the night of 18 February 1944, a bomb exploded on the Convent of the Sisters of Mary, situated on the Downs, a nearby road, killing five nuns and wounding several others. Windows and doors in the college were damaged and the roof of its swimming pool caved in; the pool was never recommissioned at that site due to the damage incurred.
The college lost fifty-eight former pupils as a result of the Second World War, including Eugene Esmonde, a recipient of the Victoria Cross. They are commemorated by a memorial above the door of the college's chapel.
Separately, during this time, Sinnott had concluded that the independent school model was not suitable, owing to the unaffordable fees required of Catholic families; in January 1942, he applied to Surrey County Council for deficiency aided school status, and this was granted in 1943. This allowed the college to be funded by the local education authority while retaining its religious character. Fees were abolished in March 1945. This marked the beginning of the process of the college becoming a voluntary aided grammar school, which was completed in July 1948.
In 1945, Richard Milward, a former pupil at the school, began a 40-year tenure as a history teacher at the college. A popular teacher and local historian, and president of the Wimbledon Society for six years, he was seen as a stalwart of the school.
Sinnott died in his early 50s and was replaced as prefect of studies by Ignatius St Lawrence in 1950.
Post-1950
The school expanded its facilities with a new wing of classrooms, kitchens and toilets completed in the early 1950s; these are now predominantly used for English and science. The growth in demand for student places meant that the school quickly expanded, from nearly 500 pupils in 1950, to 670 by the mid-1960s. In order to accommodate all students, it began to use the parish halls of the next-door Sacred Heart Church, for lessons and study spaces, and facilities in Chessington owned by the Old Wimbledonians Association. Between 1965 and 1967, the school constructed a new cross-wing, the Manners wing, which housed the sixth form, new classrooms, a gymnasium and a swimming pool; the Manners wing now houses maths and sciences.In 1968, the school successfully revived its houses tradition, which had fallen into irrelevance to many boys, and prefects resumed their function as the main guarantors of discipline. A dual house and line system, as operates today, was established. The following year, the college became a voluntary aided comprehensive school.
In the early morning of 13 February 1977, the college hall was destroyed by fire; the cause of the fire is still undetermined. The school's administration was not displeased, as a plan had been formulated for several years to build a new hall on the site of the old one; this plan was executed in 1980 in the aftermath of the fire. The new hall continued to house the college's kitchens and dinery.
During the 1980s, the school ehanced its reputation as a strong rugby and cricket school with a series of notable successes. Paddy O'D and Gerald Smythe had built an incredibly strong sporting base which fed pupils into the Wimbledon College system. Notable players from this time were numerous and many went on to represent Surrey Schools as well as England Schools and a number went on to play first class rugby both in England and abroad, Michael Nielsen, Steve Porter and Billy McCulloch There was subsequently great success in the Surrey Rugby Championship. This also saw a golden period for the Old Wimbledonians rugby club with 5 teams turning out each week on a regular basis. The practice of using the ferula for punishment, as was common in Jesuit schools, was abandoned around 1989 in line with the government's banning of corporal punishment.
From the 1990s, the school replaced its forty-minute, eight-period day with a one-hour, five-period day and then its present fifty-minute, six-period day. Initially, lessons on Friday finished after the fourth period at the school in order to encourage extracurricular activities; this practice of early finishes on Fridays remains the standard at the Ursuline High School, but was removed from the college in the 2000s. In 1996, annual prizegiving assemblies returned, having ended in 1973.
Under Michael Holman, the school rapidly expanded its facilities. In May 2002, the school opened its new sports facilities, known as the Arrupe Hall, which include a large sports hall that also serves as the exam hall and a new swimming pool. At around the same time, the Milward Centre was open; it is the present-day sixth form centre. Both the Arrupe Hall and the Milward Centre were opened over the old gymnasium and swimming pool. In 2003, a new refectory opened over the site of former lavatories. The school acquired the grounds of the former St. Catherine's School on Grand Drive, in Morden, which was renamed the Campion Centre and taught Figures and Rudiments; the grounds on Edge Hill had become known as the Loyola Centre.
Under the headmastership of Adrian Porter, in July 2005, the school opened its George Malcolm Music School. Figures and Rudiments boys returned to the main site in 2005, with the Campion Centre abandoned. The period was marked with an expansion in extracurricular activities, especially drama, with the school's student magazine, The Wimbledonian, becoming a student-run publication for a brief period until 2010. The school was modernised with personal computers and new furniture and it briefly extended its joined sixth form with the Ursuline High School to Richard Challoner and Holy Cross in Malden Manor and New Malden respectively; this was ended due to the large distances involved.
In 2011, Adrian Laing became the first lay head master of Wimbledon College. As in 1968 under Robert Carty, attempts were made at reviving the house system, which had again fallen into irrelevance, with the creation of four new houses in 2011 so that the forms system could merge with the house system. Interhouse competitions and prefect-led house assemblies were restored. Discipline has been considerably emphasised since 2011, with increased security measures, electronic staff passes and registers, and policies targeted at improving attendance, punctuality, homework completion rates and the orderliness of pupils.
On 2 March 2020, the school was closed for at least a week for deep-cleaning after a member of staff contracted the COVID-19 virus on a trip to Italy.