Swavesey & District History Society – November Meeting

About 40 attended a talk by Mike Muncaster from Kimbolton entitled “An Elizabethan Grammar School”.  During the reign of Elizabeth I it was recognised that an educated elite was necessary as servants of the Queen to govern the administration of the country, similar to today’s civil service.  Grammar schools had started during the reign of King Edward VI then in Elizabeth’s reign the state “language” was confirmed as protestant England and the deliberate aim of grammar schools was to develop Protestantism.  Many philanthropists contributed including Richard Robins of Godmanchester who in 1558 willed that enough of his lands as necessary were to be sold to raise £20 per annum with which a Free Grammar School was to be endowed in Godmanchester under the supervision of a Cambridge College to be appointed by the Bishop of Lincoln.  At Ashbourne in Derbyshire townsfolk petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for a school on the grounds that “for lack of education, the inhabitants were given over to wickedness and vices such as idleness, swearing, drunkenness, whoredom and such like”.  Building work commenced in 1586.  Before Tudor times schools were run by the church and, slowly, boys started to go to “Grammar” schools which were created to teach the classical languages, Latin and Greek, which were necessary for university studies and religious scholarship.

Ashby de la Zouch grammar school was founded in 1567 by Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon.  A document written at the beginning setting out how the school was to be run still exists.  During the reign of Elizabeth II our speaker joined the school as a boarder aged eleven in 1957 and was a wayward pupil.  He likened the school to a prison.  Aged 12 and homesick, he and some friends ran away one night but it rained hard so they sheltered under bushes in the school grounds and gave themselves up in the morning.  During his “O- level” year he did much of his homework in The Plough, a local pub.  In 1965 he visited a girl in town but was late leaving so he stole a bicycle from outside the police station.  He was shouted at from inside so he dropped the bike, jumped over a wall and ran.  He had a mutual dislike for the headmaster and on the last day of one term he was deliberately late for breakfast and reported himself to the headmaster to provoke unpleasantness.  He was most disappointed when he was simply, and loudly, shouted at to get out!  He kept a diary for 6½ of his years there then during Covid lockdown he transcribed his diaries into a book which will be released in 2026 entitled “The reluctant schoolboy”, or similar.