The School History 1872-2000

A 20th Century School History

The School's history has been defined principally by its Headmasters, the direction they wished to take the School combined with the energy and talent they brought to their vision. Overlain on this has been the interventions and guidance from the Governors and Oxfordshire Council, social changes seen across the Country, the transformation and expansion of educational opportunities - first started at the end of the 19th century - and the impact of two world wars.

During the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, Lord Williams's School had a history of educating scholars who went on to have significant national influence. In that sense, it had an impact that was greater than would be expected. It was, after all, a small rural grammar school in an area that was dominated by an agricultural economy; and perched on the edge of the County meant a certain isolation from the administrative centre. It didn't enjoy the advantages of being one of the great city grammar schools - although being under the protective wing of New College, Oxford proved to be an often unsung benefit.

By the time this history starts in the last three decades of the 19th Century, on two occasions the future of the School's very existence had been in doubt.

Fortunately, at the turn of the 19th Century there was a reversal in the School's fortunes and it flourished under the Rev. Alfred Shaw. Unquestionably, it would have continued to expand if it hadn't had been for the First World War. This brought the momentum, built-up over a number of years, to a halt.

Thereafter in the 1920s, the School had to cope with the aftermath of the War, the retirement of Shaw, a loss of much teaching talent and, across the country as a whole, economic depression. It was a period of picking-up where things had stopped in 1914. Walter Bye - very much a man of the Empire - made progress but the School failed to reach its pre-war potential.

The 1930s saw a new headmaster arrive and gradual further improvements but with no great radical change; in part because the School's physical capacity had been reached and it would need new buildings to increase in size - buildings that the School couldn't afford. In part it was down to the Headmaster's conservative and dour approach to schooling. Arthur Dyer was not someone who injected a sense of fun into daily activities, and perhaps it was unsurprising that he was forever struggling to encourage boys to stay on into the sixth form even if, by the end of the 1930s, academic standards had been raised.

In one sense, the intervention of the Second World War, whilst once again halting any progress that could be made, acted as a break from the past. It also accelerated the recognition that the School could no longer remain even partially independent and it had to become a fully fledged 'state' school - even if within a unique environment.

In 1948, a new enlightened start was made under the headship of Hugh Mullins. Yes, the School was under full LEA control and this at times caused tension. When Mullins started, the School was still suffering from staff shortages but he was responsible for starting the transformation of the School to an entity closer to what it is today. His ambition was very clear: he wanted to build the sixth form and significantly increase the number entering university. In his time, he saw the 6th Form grow from a handful of pupils to close on 20 when he resigned - a number that today seems insignificant but then was a major achievement. This transformation accelerated under Jon Nelson; a major new building programme took place, radical changes to School structures were introduced and the roll grew from 170 to 215. But it needed a young headmaster, Geoff Goodall, to complete the transform of the School into something that was thoroughly modern, reaching heights in music, drama, sport and academic achievement not seen before. Of course, this was helped by the public spending resources that were pumped into education, and the increase in pupil numbers from the post-war baby boom that allowed more opportunities to be exploited.

In the 1970s, the biggest single change came with the introduction of Comprehensive education. Since then, the School has grown to be one of the largest in the country. This has brought both advantage and disadvantage. In the late 80s and early 90s there were moments when the state education system seemed under constant attack from the Government of the day but this failed to diminish national-level achievements in the arts and sciences. There have been four Head Teachers in 20 years, whereas the previous four stretched over fifty years. Split sites were a continued headache and added further stress to limited resources. But therein lays an irony. During its modern history all the School's headmasters have held ambitions for the School to be as academically distinguished as some of the great public schools. It has taken the Comprehensive system to create the level of academic achievement - numbers and percentages passing exams and going on to university - which they dreamed of and never quite achieved. (Though, it should be quickly added, the School has historically always produced a steady stream of distinguished academics.)

Since 2000, the School has been a specialist college in sport, reflecting a long tradition of producing great sports people that stretches back to the beginning of the 20th century: senior internationals at soccer and rugby, a world championship racing driver, a stream of internationals across a number of sports at junior levels, and steady representation at Varsity level.

Of course, it is a truism to say that pupils of old would be hard pressed to recognise the 21st Century School but most would accept this as a desirable consequence of progress. On the other hand, it is remarkable to learn that pupils were making school trips abroad from the early 1920s, and that much of the extra-curricula activity has little changed for decades.

Of course progress sums up what has happened in the last hundred years or so. At times it may have stuttered but it would be a foolish person who would ever claim that 'it was better in my time.'

Prologue

1872 - The Grammar School closed following the disastrous Headmastership of Dr Thomas Brandley (or Broadley) Fookes (born c1809 in Dartford, Kent), a man of 'ungovernable temper.' He retired to Hampstead on a pension of half his salary and died in 1874. He had been appointed in 1841 (and arrived with his wife Maria and three children - during their time at the school they had another four) and although he was also appointed the Curate of Stoke Talmage his Christian beliefs didn't stop him being a man of a violent manner, who seemed to spend most of his time thrashing and expelling boys, playing the violin, and growing potatoes in the School's playground. To compound matters, during previous decades new schools had grown up in Thame and were taking pupils who might have otherwise gone to the Grammar School. (In the 1851 Census, recorded at the Grammar School are: George Maudby an assistant master, Gustav Adolphus Weill styled as a Professor of Languages and born in Baden, and four pupils - Duncan Robertson born in Jamaica, Richard Parker from High Wycombe, George and Frederick Faber from the East Indies, and William and Walter Fookes who would appear to be nephews.) Of the other schools, the most competitive was the Howard House School which, by 1868, had 120 boarders and 40 day pupils. That year, it merged with the Oxford County School to provide a better alternative to the Grammar School. The success of this institution put paid to the claim by Fookes that the reason that he had no pupils was due to a declining population in the town. Indeed between 1801 and 1851 the population had increased from 2,100 to 3,200. (The last pupil in this disastrous era was said to have been Harry Lupton who had been at the School in 1862 - later he wrote the History of Thame and its Hamlets.) A contemporary letter to the Thame Gazette, described the school as 'a richly endowed but comparatively useless Institution.' On another occasion, a reader wrote, 'The money goes not to educate the children of Thame but to provide a fine house and a sufficient income for some lucky fellow of New College.' (The Master's salary was £200 per annum.) The conditions in the School were grim: one long double desk ran the length of the dark cold school room across which two rows of schoolboys faced each other. In one corner was the usher's desk, where he would sit and hear lessons. It was common for boys to be fetched out of school to do various jobs for their parents. Fookes was never seen. In 1871, the census had recorded no boarders at the school and Fookes was living in the Almshouses along with four recorded residents and a servant.

1873 - New College took control and a plan was drawn up to open a new School. This retained the links to New College but it was to take six more years before the plan became reality. However, this scheme met with strong opposition within the town as many doubted the need for another school when Howard House school was flourishing. The new scheme was described as 'totally against the advantage which out townspeople in general ought to possess in the education of the rising generation,' and the fees proposed were considered 'too high to render any real service to the town, or to attract an adequate number of pupils.'

1874 -The Thame Gazette commented, 'Need we paint the deplorable picture of the empty school-house, not even at this time inhabited by a person to keep it clean, with a patrimony belonging to it so rich....Not a pupil has belonged to the school for years.' However it was in 1874 that a new scheme for the management of the school was approved and a new governing body formed of thirteen members (including J W Marsh the proprietor of the rival school) and New College's sole control ceased. It was proposed that the School would take around 120 pupils including at least 60 boarders with a residence for the headmaster.

1875 - The new site of the School on the Oxford Road was purchased for £1050 as it had been decided by the governors that the old school site was unsuitable for the new school building - even though they had the opportunity to pull down the almshouses if they so wished. The Thame Gazette commented, 'in our opinion a more healthy or prettier spot could not be found in the entire neighbourhood.'

1876 - The Oxford architect William Wilkinson was engaged to build the new School. His original plans were too costly and in the end a rather sombre red brick design was used with dressings of Bath stone, after the style of St Edward's School, Oxford. The following is a description of his life and works:

William Wilkinson, the younger of the two brothers, was born in Witney in 1819. In the last months of his father's lifetime in 1838, he was co opted into the family auctioneering firm, and in this trade he continued for some years. Notices of his auctions appear at intervals in the local papers. As was common at the time, the business was not clearly limited. Wilkinson sold building materials, livestock, furniture, timber, houses, or real estate, and the local directories call him variously auctioneer, appraiser, land surveyor, estate agent, architect, builder, agent for the Royal Farmers, Insurance Office, and coal, timber, stone, and lime merchant. As with his brother, it is very unlikely that he received formal architectural training. Yet his first known building is a new church that at Lew on the road from Witney to Bampton, built in 1841 when Wilkinson was 21 or 22. This gaunt church shows as much sophistication as most architects were bringing to ecclesiastical work at this date in the revival of Christian architecture. However, architecture could hardly be a full-time employment for anyone in Witney in the 1840s, so he continued his other occupations till 1856. This background enables one to understand how it was that Wilkinson depended first and foremost on severely practical abilities. All that is known of his later life and works suggests that he was never the man to get his specifications wrong or to underestimate any practical contingency. This reliability combined with a modest sense of the picturesque and a lively interest in grouping and planning, took Wilkinson to a high and esteemed place among architects, if not to the top.

William Wilkinson left Witney in about March 1856, in which month he had offices at 2 St. Giles, Oxford, as well as in his home town. Shortly afterwards he was operating solely from Oxford, and by 1860 he had moved to 5 Beaumont Street, the seat of his practice until his retirement. From this point his career very rapidly blossomed. There were two or three crucial commissions which brought prosperity. Firstly, in about 1857, Wilkinson superseded J. C. Buckler as architect to the Oxfordshire Police Committee, at a period when numerous provincial police stations were scheduled for erection. Secondly, there was the vital commission from St. John's College in 1860 to layout the Norham Manor Estate. This soon turned into a general brief of superintendence over the whole development of North Oxford. The precise extent of Wilkinson's contribution to this will never be quite clear, but he certainly laid out the roads, decided on the sites of the villas, designed many himself, and as architect to St. John's possessed certain powers of authorization and veto. These responsibilities passed with the practice to his nephew H. W. Moore, so that with the expansion of the St. John's estate further and further north, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the whole of Oxford between St. Giles' Church and Summertown, bordered on the west by the Oxford Canal and on the east by the Cherwell, is the conception of Wilkinson and Moore.

Jobs also soon abounded for Wilkinson outside the immediate environs of Oxford. In virtue of an office block which he designed in Bishopsgate, London (1860-1), and the Saturday Review rather rashly but impressively compared him with Gilbert Scott as one of the foremost English architects. Then came the third great commission, the Randolph Hotel, Oxford (1864-6). At the opening, Dr. Adams, a Fellow of St. John's, was able to claim that his fame as an architect was not confined to Oxford, and even had it been so hitherto, this fabric would have entitled him to a European reputation ... Had they (the Directors) not had a man like Mr. Wilkinson, who threw his whole soul into the work, they would never have raised this noble structure. It was the emanation of his brain and to him was due the credit not only of the exterior but of every internal arrangement.

The 1860's were the climax of his career, and were marked by the publication in 1870 of a book of his designs called English Country Houses. Forty-five Views and Plans of recently erected Mansions, Private Residences, Parsonage-Houses, Farm-Houses, Lodges and Cottages; with sketches of furniture and fittings; and a practical treatise on house-building. A second and augmented edition with sixty-one views was published in 1875. This book gives a clear picture of Wilkinson's mature style. Up to 1870 the majority of his important works incorporate elements of strictly Gothic detail in picturesque and asymmetrical facades. The lighting, however, is better than in most houses of this style, and the detailing is rarely overemphasized. There are, of course, exceptions, such as the Oxford University Gymnasium, a solid, four-square brick building with undecorated round-headed windows. Wilkinson's known church restorations are unostentatious but uninspired. He was primarily a practical architect who catered by preference for the wealthy middle classes. He built in Gothic not out of strong religious belief, but because he was most familiar with the style. In English Country Houses there is not a contentious word about the 'true' style, and the treatise on house-building which accompanies the plates is severely limited to practical matters, as befits a book designed as an advertisement to potential clients. But the book did achieve some notice; the final accolade to Wilkinson's success as an architect was the illustration of five of his works in Habitations Modernes, by the internationally famous architect Viollet-le-Duc, who must first have noticed Wilkinson from English Country Houses.

The second edition suggests a change in Wilkinson's style in the early 1870?s, reflecting a national trend. Gentler elements are favoured, and he tries often to sound a more restrained domestic Tudor note familiar to him from the stone-built houses of West Oxfordshire. The compositions are frankly less interesting but they continue to be well and originally planned. Foremost among the later works is St. Edward's School, Oxford, where the great formal quadrangle possesses a natural dignity unmatched in many schools designed by better architects. But by the late 1870s, many of Wilkinson's buildings have ceased to be distinctive. Lord Williams's Grammar School at Thame (1878-9), for instance, is competent but unremarkable handling of domestic Tudor motifs.

1877 - The Old School building was sold by auction to Mr P.H Pearce for £1,710. (His wife opened the 'Girls Grammar School' that took both day girls and boarders.) Construction on the Oxford Road started with Messrs. Taylor and Grist of Aylesbury undertaking the work at a tender price of £6,095 - the money raised by the sale of stock, the old school and a number of houses in Thame including the Saracens Head.

1878 - Building was delayed when the workmen went on strike, threatening, hooting and throwing bricks at the clerk of works who had made himself unpopular by unnecessary complaints. Five candidates were interviewed for the Headmastership and George Plummer was appointed in November.

1879 - The School reopened on 1st May on the Oxford Road site under the Headmastership of George Plummer aged 32. 40 boys were on the role and four staff (Plummer, Mackenzie, King and Digby). Plummer had been Headmaster of Wellingborough Grammar School and he hoped to achieve at Thame what Edward Thring had achieved at Uppingham: to raise a small country grammar school to national importance. But as one of his first head boys would recall, he was not a genius like Thring, just a very good teacher. Canon A.G Robinson wrote of the first few hours of the School's new existence, 'The School buildings were brand new. The play shed was still unfinished. What afterwards became the Headmaster's garden was a tangle of green and weeds. There was no formal opening of any kind. We took our places, listened to a short speech by the Headmaster and were then gradually sorted into classes.' Fees for tuition of day boys were fixed at £6 and boarders paid an additional £35. The first assistant masters were Messrs. Mackenzie and King, with Mr R H Digby as music master. J Cole and H D Hodgson (who died the following year) were Head Boys; J Harrison and Willey were sports captains.

1880 - The School's first ever cricket match was played on the newly levelled field: RSC High Wycombe was defeated by one run. The Mercury, an eight-page school magazine, was published containing articles and stories, puzzles and gossip besides the usual school news. The price was 6d and the then editor A G Robinson later recalled that 'there was always considerable difficulty in persuading boys to buy it.' A rugby match was played against Linden House, a private school in Littlemore - Lord Williams's won. The toll-gate opposite the School was abolished. Staff changed frequently in this period and the original assistant masters had already left and been replaced. H Tibbits, I Whitsed and W M Wykes were all Head Boys; along with J C Crook they were also the sports teams’ captains.

1881 - RSC High Wycombe turned the tables and beat the School at cricket in a match held in May but the School won the return match in July. This began a rivalry that lasted for many decades. St Edmund Hall was another fixture.

1881 Census for Lord Williams’s School

Name		Year of Birth	Place of Birth	Occupation
George	Plummer	1847	Penzance	Head
Sarah J.	Plummer