Shrewsbury School - History

History

Following a petition in 1542 to Henry VIII from the townspeople of Shrewsbury for a free grammar school, Shrewsbury School was founded by charter in 1552 under King Edward VI by Adam Jones in three rented wooden buildings, which included Riggs Hall, built in 1450, and now the only remaining part of the original foundation. Originally, the curriculum was based on Continental Calvinism, under scholarly headmaster, Thomas Ashton and boys were taught the catechism of Calvin. The school attracted large numbers of pupils from Protestant families in Shrewsbury, Shropshire and North Wales. It had few facilities so early pupils lodged with local families. Philip Sidney, who attended Shrewsbury between the ages of nine and thirteen, lodged with the family of George Leigh, Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury. Having achieved a reputation for excellence under Ashton, in 1571 the school was augmented by Queen Elizabeth I. The stone buildings, including a chapel, dormitories, library and classrooms were completed by 1630 and the school continued in these, until it was relocated in 1882. After period of decline and following extensive restoration work, the buildings were re-opened as Shrewsbury Public Library, on Castle Hill in 1983.

In 1868 the school was one of the nine schools of England (along with Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors', Rugby, St Paul's, Westminster and Winchester) regulated by the Public Schools Act. Headmasters include Sir Thomas Ashton, Samuel Butler, Benjamin Hall Kennedy, Cyril Argentin Alington, H. H. Hardy, Lord Wolfenden and Sir Eric Anderson. Thomas Ashton, the first headmaster, gave the school a classical and humanistic tone that has been retained, though sciences and other studies are now also in the curriculum.

In 1882, Headmaster Henry Whitehead Moss moved the school from its original town centre location to a new site over the River Severn, in Kingsland (a site which had, amongst other things, housed the Shrewsbury workhouse and a foundling hospital).

In 1912 Neville Cardus, subsequently to become famous as a music and cricket journalist, was appointed the school's assistant cricket professional. In 1914 he became secretary to the then headmaster, Cyril Alington.

Since the turn of the millennium, the school's site has seen investment. A new music school, The Maidment Building, was opened by Prince Charles in 2001. The Main School Building saw an internal renovation over several years, modernising all classrooms. A new boarding house has been completed, as has a new world-class indoor cricket centre and a new swimming pool. In 2003 Shrewsbury International School, Bangkok was opened in Bangkok, Thailand, in a location on the banks of the Chao Phraya River.

In 2005 Shrewsbury School was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools which were found guilty of running an illegal price-fixing cartel which had allowed them to drive up fees for thousands of parents. Each school was required to pay a nominal penalty of £10,000 and all agreed to make ex-gratia payments totalling three million pounds into a trust designed to benefit pupils who attended the schools during the period in respect of which fee information was shared. However, Mrs Jean Scott, the head of the Independent Schools Council, said that independent schools had always been exempt from anti-cartel rules applied to business, were following a long-established procedure in sharing the information with each other, and that they were unaware of the change to the law (on which they had not been consulted). She wrote to John Vickers, the OFT director-general, saying, "They are not a group of businessmen meeting behind closed doors to fix the price of their products to the disadvantage of the consumer. They are schools that have quite openly continued to follow a long-established practice because they were unaware that the law had changed."

In November 2005, a decision was taken by the governors to admit girls to the sixth form; initially aiming to admit 60 girls, then increasing to 100. In 2010, the governors unanimously agreed that the school should become co-educational from 2014.