Monmouth School - History

History

In 1613, William Jones, a prominent merchant and haberdasher, gave the Haberdashers’ Company £6,000, followed by a further £3,000 bequeathed in his will on his death in 1615, to "ordaine a preacher, a Free-School and Almes-houses for twenty poor and old distressed people, as blind and lame, as it shall seem best to them, of the Towne of Monmouth, where it shall be bestowed". Jones was born at Newland, Gloucestershire and brought up in Monmouth, leaving to make a sizeable fortune as a London merchant engaged in the cloth trade with the continent. Jones' motivations for his bequest appear partly philanthropic and partly evangelical; "the priority given to the preacher illustrates his concern to convert an area in the Marches which was still, when the school opened in 1614, strongly recusant."

Nothing remains of the original buildings. In 1865, and on the same site, the school was substantially rebuilt (see below). By 1873 it had become a member of the prestigious Headmaster's Conference (created by Edward Thring of Uppingham in 1869), a mark of Monmouth's increasing reputation and status as a public school. As a result of rising revenues from investments - its endowment had become one of wealthiest of any school by the mid-19th century - the original foundation was re-organised in 1891 to support a new girls’ school and an elementary school in the town, as well as a boys grammar school in Pontypool. The elementary school was transferred to County Council control in 1940 with West Monmouth School at Pontypool following in 1955. This left the William Jones’s Schools Foundation responsible for Monmouth School and Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls- also known as HMSG, both of which acquired Direct Grant status in 1946. In 1976, with the ending of the Assisted Places scheme, the school returned to full independence.