Looking Backward

S.R.G.S., 1885-1905

In his article in the last Magazine on Wesley College in 1859, Mr. Wrigley concluded with the hope that we should leave behind us a much more complete record of our activities than has been done by our predecessors. In an article ten years previously on Wesley College, 1837-1905, Mr. Watling outlined the whole history of the College and appealed for further information and records for publication in the Magazine. In writing this article my intention is to sketch the last twenty years of the Grammar School before its amalgamation with Wesley College to form King Edward VII School as we now know it. At the same time it is hoped that Old Boys and others associated with the School will send us further articles (however short) and any records which they may have which will help to complete the story in more detail. It is unfortunate that with such a rich history the present School has so few records. I have listed the main sources of my information at the end of this article but even these usually have to be consulted at the Public Library and do not exist in the School Library. The next section gives the main dates in the history of the School right from the beginning so that the period under review can be related to the whole history.

MAIN DATES IN THE SCHOOL'S HISTORY.

1604 Licence granted to erect "The Free Grammar School of King James of England." The school had one Master and one Usher and was carried on in a house leased from the Church Burgesses, which had been occupied by an earlier school in the previous century (v. Wigfull, I).

1648 A new school was built at the junction of Campo Lane and Townhead Street in an area which was radically altered in 1900. For a description, see Leader, p. 123, and Wigfull II.

1776 A local subscription taken to repair the buildings and increase the salaries of the Master and Usher.

1825 The new school opened in St. George's Square - this building was taken over by the Technical College in 1885 and demolished in 1912.

1836 Collegiate School opened (a proprietary school connected with the Church of England).

1838 Wesley College opened.

1885 Grammar School moved into the Collegiate School premises.

1888 Charity Commissioners issued new scheme of government.

1905 King Edward VII School opened in temporary premises - moved into the reconstructed Wesley College building in 1906.

THE UNION WITH THE COLLEGIATE SCHOOL.

From the beginning the Collegiate School had provided a classical education and established links with Oxford and Cambridge Universities by providing four Exhibitions out of its current income. On its opening some more advanced boys migrated from the Grammar School (118, 7) and subsequently boys who wanted to go on to the university finished their education at the Collegiate School after leaving the Grammar School (MI, 51). As with many other similar ventures it Was found that education cannot easily be run on a profit-making basis and already in the sixties the school was not controlled by the original trustees but was let to the Principal at a rent sufficient to meet the interest on the debt and the cost of repairs.

The 1944 Education Act was one of the more successful efforts which have been made over the last century-and-a-half to provide a satisfactory system of education in this country. Nearly a century earlier a Great Exhibition was held in London in 1851 which helped to cause a great upsurge in interest in education generally and in scientific and technical education in particular, as it was seen that without a reformed educational system England would not be able to face the increased competition from the rest of the world. One of the immediate developments was the formation of the Science and Art Department (a lineal forerunner of the present Ministry of Education) which gave grants for the teaching of science and organised examinations in scientific subjects. The Principal of the Collegiate School was in favour of organising a section for science as well as the existing ones for Classics and English. The present School Certificate examinations can also be traced back to these times as Oxford and Cambridge began their local examinations in 1858. In 1864 the Government set up the Schools Inquiry Commission which investigated the conditions existing in the endowed grammar and proprietary schools. Their report in 1868 revealed a low level, with most schools dominated by classics taught in a ridiculous way. The 1869 Endowed Schools Act set up a Commission to approve new schemes for these schools to bring them more in line with new educational ideas the powers of this Commission were subsequently transferred to the Charity Commissioners and then to the Board of Education.

In 1865, Mr. (later Sir) J. G. Fitch visited Sheffield for the Schools Inquiry Commission and reported that his visit interested him greatly the more so because so few of the proprietary schools in my district are flourishing and successful. and scarcely any of them aim so high, or achieve so much as the Collegiate." Of the Grammar School, which then had 122 day boys, he reported: " the general character of the institution was that of a secondary or commercial school of a high class rather than that of a purely grammar school, as it possessed no exhibition to the universities, and was in the midst of a large trading population: it was calculated under its then management to render great and increasing service to the town. even though it left one great want, that of a high or classical school, still unsupplied. (Filch, 250). Under J. E. Jackson. the Head Master from 1863 to 1884, the numbers increased to a maximum of about 180, and then decreased to Just over a hundred at the end of his period. In the same period the numbers at the Collegiate School also seem to have increased to about the same maximum and then decreased even more as one report gives only 40 boys in 1884, although this may have been due to the expected dissolution of the school. Part of the decrease in numbers is undoubtedly due to the opening in 1880 of the new Central School (the forerunner of High Storrs) by the local School Board set tip under the 1870 Education Act. This was the first of its kind to be erected in the country and was one of the most successful; while administered under the elementary code it was the experience of schools like this which was partly responsible for the expansion of Secondary Education tinder the 1902 Education Act.

The new trends in education locally and nationally and the appointment of a new Head Master to the Grammar School led to renewed negotiations with the Endowed School Commissioners in 1884. The transfer to the Collegiate premises was not delayed but the negotiations with the Commissioners dragged out until they issued the new scheme for the school in 1888. Previously the School Governors had been almost identical with the Church Burgesses and the details of the school business were kept in their order book for some time ('VII., 59). Under the new arrangements the Governing Body was made partly representative, having three representatives from the City Council. two from the School Board, two from the Town Trustees and two from Firth College (subsequently Sheffield University), in addition to six cooptative members. Later two more representatives were added from the City Technical Instruction Committee when this aided the school. The Foundation Scholarships, previously in the nomination of the Governors, were made competitive and were never to be less than fifteen in number. The Town Trustees voted a grant of £150 p. a. for leaving scholarships to the Universities. There was to be a pension fiend for the Head Master and accommodation was to be provided for not less than 300 boys, who had to be at least seven years old.

THE PROGRESS OF THE SCHOOL UNDER SENIOR.

Anybody entering the present school and having to wait in the vestibule will soon notice the plate commemorating the Headmastership of the Rev. Edward Senior from 1884 to 1899. While it would be wrong to attribute all the development in the school during this period to one man, it is obvious that he played quite a large part in building up the school. He was a Cambridge M.A., having been a scholar and prizeman of St. Catherine's College, 30th Wrangler (i.e., 30th in order of merit in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos), as well as a London B.A. Before his appointment he had been an Assistant Master at Rossall School for two years. Immediately on his appointment, Senior had to superintend the transfer to the Collegiate premises, in which building the school reassembled after the Easter 1885 holidays. The premises consisted of the Headmasters house, south of the school field, and the school itself. With the fives courts they cost £7,000. and were acquired by public subscriptions; over £2,000 was spent in putting the school and playground into good order. Subsequently a Physical Laboratory and Lecture Room, a Manual Training and Drawing Room, and two new class-rooms were added and the Chemistry Laboratory extended. Many of these developments were only made possible by the grant of £600 p.a., which the City Technical Instruction Committee made from 1891 onwards under the powers they were given by the 1889 Technical Instruction Act and the 1890 Local Taxation Act. The 1897 Report on Sheffield Charities made on behalf of the Charity Commissioners lists the accommodation as a central hall (also used as a gymn.), five class rooms, manual training room, physics lecture room and a chemistry laboratory. The latter had room for 23 boys, the manual room for 20, and the physics laboratory for only six. Professor Turnbull states that in 1899 there was a large room, seating 30 or more, in tiers, with a large bench and at least three double benches for practical work so that a class of about 20 could all do elementary practical physics at once. In addition the whole of the work of the preparatory department was carried out in the Headmaster's house where there were two small class-rooms; this also had accommodation for twenty boarders as well as a few assistant masters. Despite these extensions the accommodation available was well below that necessary for the figure of three hundred boys mentioned as the minimum desirable on the reorganisation of the school. Up to the end of the century the numbers usually varied between 160 and 180 but they increased to just over the two hundred before the close of the school.

Under Senior the School had three divisions the Preparatory consisted of two forms for boys under about 12: the Lower School consisted of Forms I, II, and III; the Upper School had a University Remove Form, a Commercial Form, and Forms IV, V and VI. Professor Turnbull, who entered the school in 1894, writes: " My case was typical of several boys. (one term in Prep. 2, three terms in Prep. 1, one term in each of form 1, 2, 3, and one or two in remove, and 4 and 5: about three years in the 6th and probably two years of this in the upper sixth. No attempt was made to dragoon boys into ' years '." The Upper School was divided into two departments, called University and Commercial. The latter declined in numbers until the scheme was changed and boys who were intending to stay on at school chose the former whether or not they were intending to enter a university. The Sixth Form was slowly built up from none in 1884 to about a dozen. Between 1889 and 1895 sixteen boys went on to the universities. Boys were prepared for a variety of examinations (the present School Certificate was organised later to avoid this duplication of examinations) and the main successes are recorded on the Honours Boards which are outside the dining room of the present building.

The school was also divided into divisions according to the boys' ability in mathematics, and sections for science. Professor Turnbull writes: " We started Latin in Prep. I (French also). Greek about Form 3 or so. Mathematics was generally run on the 'modular' system; i.e., top and 4th divisions simultaneously, 2nd and 5th, 3rd and 6th, in three classrooms. Thus we in the 4th sat behind division 1 and were taught by Senior.One set would work examples while the other set got some teaching. A happy state of things, for Senior often left the work on the blackboard. Thus a boy in division 4 might see the formula (for the binomial theorem) on the board-as I did, and be thoroughly intrigued, and learn it years before it was officially taught; x1/2 also appeared and led to the natural interpretation."

Summarising his experience, Professor Turnbull writes: " We got an excellent all-round training at the school: how good it was I have only realised since, on comparing it with other schools."

SPORTS AND OTHER SCHOOL ACTIVITIES.

Under Senior's reign a large number of new activities seem to have been started and a number of others were continued and developed. The details of these, as well as of a number of other points in this article, are often taken from the School Magazine which was issued five times a year and which itself began in 1889. In its early numbers it deplores the lack of written history of the school and subsequently contains a number of historical articles of various phases of the Collegiate and Grammar Schools. A number of the reports from various societies take the form of original papers by boys at school which were often very good and could well be emulated by their successors. From the beginning the magazine is closely linked with the Old Boys' Association which was formed about the same time and which promoted various meetings besides the annual dinner. In 1890, the Debating Society was started and also, partly in connection with it, a School Library. The society changed its form several times, reappearing later as the Literary Society and then later still being amalgamated with the Science Society which had itself sprang from a Natural History society. At both these societies the majority of the papers were by the boys themselves, although the staff and visitors also gave some. There was considerable interest in 1895 when lantern slides were first used-the society also built up a small museum and library. The Dramatic Society gave its first performance in 1895. K. E. Kirk, who was the first to win the Akroyd Scholarship and who is now Bishop of Oxford, was then an outstanding writer and prime mover in dramatic work.

It is now eighty years since the first Grammar School Sports were held and they were a regular feature of the period under review, with the usual events and prizes and a dearth of entrants for the Old Boys' Races. Swimming Sports are also mentioned but it is not said where they were held; the 1897 Report mentions Senior's desire to have a swimming bath as well as a separate gymnasium. Soccer was only introduced a few years before the move to Collegiate Crescent and matches were played against Rotherham. Chesterfield, Doncaster. Leeds and Barnsley Grammar Schools, Wesley College, Technical School, Medicals, Sheffield Club and the Bankers. Cricket matches were played against man. of the same teams. The great cricket match of the season was the one against the Clergy. This began in the morning the others only started after school hours. In nearly all the cricket matches we find that some members of the staff played for the school team. From comments in the magazine and from Professor Turnbull's letter it appears that there was intense rivalry between the School and Wesley College. At football, " Wesley College regularly beat us: only in December, 1894. my first term, we won 3--0 and I got a thoroughly wrong impression of events: for I never saw another victory.In cricket it was rather better. We won twice in the ten years (on the second occasion) we were out for moderate score, but everything went right when we fielded. Dodson bowled wonderfully and took 9 wickets, a record which was only spoilt by my running a fellow out Although the main school field had been rested for a season, it could not stand up to the wear and tear of continual use, and in 1900 an appeal was made for £2,000 for additional playing fields. Professor Turnbull describes the rather dull and undulating ground „ which was acquired and opened in November 1901 and present school-boys will recognise from the description that the fields bought are those we now use at Whiteley Woods.

THE LAST PERIOD UNDER A. B. HASLAM.

In 1891 the Rev. A. Brooke Haslam joined the school as Classics master and was subsequently appointed Second Master. He was a Foundation Scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained first class honours in Classics. He had been at school at Rugby under the well-known Head Master Temple, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, and presented the prizes at one of the speech days. Haslam had been an assistant master at Cheltenham School for six years and then from 1879 he had been Head Master at Ripon Grammar School. Professor Turnbull writes: " Haslam was a great classics teacher, and had little opinion of mathematics. My father had the utmost difficulty in getting him to let my elder brother and me switch over to more mathematics during our last two or three years at school." His ability as a Classics teacher is born out by the distinctions won by his students. In 1898 Senior was ordered to have a rest because of his health, and Haslam became acting Head Master. After returning for a term later in the year, Senior had to be given further leave and then in 1899 he retired, but did not live much longer. Meanwhile Haslam had started reorganising the school and his appointment as Head Master seems to have been expected although there were over a hundred applications for the post.

Haslam introduced our present system of 3-hour lessons, with seven periods a day. ending at 4.15,. but with half-holidays on Tuesday,. Thursday and Saturday, as compared with only Wednesdays and Saturdays before. In this way it became possible to arrange for optional subjects. Form masters taught their own forms more than they had done previously and lessons in the main subjects were arranged to take place concurrently. The school was divided into university (or classical) and modern sides and the scientific side became a School of Science, recognised by the Science and Art Department. The university side in the Upper School took Latin, Greek or German, French and Mathematics, but Professor Turnbull deprecates the fact that they could no longer take science. The modern side was either scientific or commercial; the former took English, French, German (Spanish if required), Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Drawing and Manual Work while the commercials took shorthand and bookkeeping.

In 1895 the Royal Commission on Secondary Education had issued its report and in the preparation of this, A. P. Laurie had inspected the schools in the West Riding and compared their conditions with those observed by J. C. Fitch thirty years earlier. He had commented on the small size of the Grammar School, the very small sixth form and consequent poor entry to the universities. He emphasised the small use which was made of the physics laboratory as only a few boys at the top of the school used it and there was no attempt made to give all the boys a course of elementary practical physics, but it appears that subsequently, possibly as a result of this comment, greater use was made of the physics laboratory (see Professor Turnbull's comment on the laboratory mentioned earlier). In general, he said, "there was a want of briskness and brightness in the teaching."

In 1902 the Education Act was passed and began the system of Secondary (Grammar) Schools with the local authorities being responsible. Sir Michael Sadler, a leading educationist, then Professor of Education at Manchester University and subsequently Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University, was ask( d to prepare a report on Secondary and Higher Education in Sheffield for the guidance of the city council. In this report he writes: "The weakest spot in the educational arrangements of the City is in the secondary education provided for boys. Neither school is at present in a position to provide the kind of higher secondary education which a great city like Sheffield needs, and ought to have. There is need for a secondary school which should give the highest instructions in English, in classics, in mathematics and in foreign languages, together with instruction in science. Were the way to open at the present time for a union between the Grammar School and the Wesley College. there would be considerable advantage In reference to the Grammar School, Sadler said that more class-rooms were needed. that a good library was necessary and supported the Board of Education which had urged an improvement in the laboratories. He also mentioned the need for some masters to take higher subjects, including mathematics, and urged that every care should be taken in their appointment. As Wesley College authorities were also contemplating altering their governing system and increasing their local connections. Sadler's suggestion for a union of the two schools bore fruit. The new school started in Wesley College premises but took the old name. suitably modified to refer to the reigning monarch instead of to his predecessor of three centuries before.

THE STAFF.

It is impossible in this article to give even the names of all the staff during this period. This in itself is an indication of the progress made because it was only earlier in the nineteenth century that a Third Master, in addition to the Head and Second Master, had been appointed. Usually, too, the Third Master was only a senior boy who was teaching while he was continuing his own education and possibly before going on to the university. In this century there were about ten other full-time masters, in addition to the Head and Second Masters and two ladies for the Beginners' Class and a number of visiting part-time masters for special subjects. Of the full-time staff the great majority were graduates of different universities.

Haslam's Second Master was J. H. Hodgetts who had come to the School as first form master in 1890. He was a Senior Optime (Second Class Honours in Mathematics) and Scholar of Queen's College, Cambridge. From his report we can infer that Sadler was not very impressed with the teaching of Mathematics at an advanced level. Professor Turnbull says that Hodgetts `" was an excellent teacher of mathematics " but that " because he was tied to so many other groups of boys for teaching " he had to leave the more advanced boys on their own a great deal. Thus Turnbull had "to read the calculus etc., more or less alone with occasional help from Hodgetts." Consequently Sadler's criticism probably meant that the school was understaffed on the mathematical side after Senior's retirement.

From his letter Professor Turnbull seems to have been most impressed with S. J. Chapman. of whom he writes: " I had great luck at the start: S. J. Chapman somehow was master in Prep. II in 1894. Anyhow I was under the charge of a first-class man for my first term, and he influenced me greatly. Only far later did I realise how exceptional he was." Chapman had been educated at Manchester Grammar School and Owens College, Manchester and taught at the school from 1893 to 1895. He left to go to Cambridge whence, after a brilliant career, he went as a lecturer at Cardiff University College, before returning to Manchester as the Professor of Political Economy. After the first world war he became the Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade and a member of many important economic committees.

Of other masters Professor Turnbull writes:

"Scripture. including Greek Testament, was well taught: and I remember the real interest in reading through St. Mark's gospel with Jack Latham in the Third Form. J. L. taught us trigonometry later: his great formula was "sine squared pig plus cosine squared pig equals one." He drove home the idea of the arbitrary variable in an identity. He also taught music and choral singing: no great shakes until that wizard Sir Henry Coward took us on, about 1902 or so, and made a world of difference. He was quite first rate and made the Sheffield Choir world famous.In 1897 I witnessed Coward conducting from a high scaffold 70,000 school children, gathered in Norfolk Park, singing to Queen Victoria and accompanied by about half a dozen large brass bands placed spokewise about sixty yards away in six directions. A complete success which utterly baffled the pundits from London who came to scoff."

REFERENCES.

On first coming to the school I was very interested to read Mr. Watling's account of Wesley College in the June 1937 issue of the Magazine. Mr. Wrigley wrote an article in the last (December, 1947) issue about Wesley College in 1859. Throughout this article I have been quoting from letters to the writer by H. W. Turnbull, F.R.S., Regius Professor of Mathematics in the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His father was W. P. Turnbull, His Majesty's Divisional Inspector of Schools, and closely connected with the school while his sons were in attendance. While at school he won a scholarship in mathematics to Trinity College, Cambridge as well as the local Earnshaw scholarship. At Cambridge he was Second Wrangler and a Smiths Prizeman and became a Fereday Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. After lecturing at Cambridge, Liverpool and Hong Kong he returned to England during the first war and was an Assistant Master at Repton School and one of His Majesty's Inspectors of Schools before his appointment at St. Andrews in 1921. He is one of the leading algebraists in British Mathematics and has a world-wide reputation.

References to the SRGS Magazine issued from 1889 to 1905 in fifteen annual volumes have been indicated as M8, 7, meaning volume 8, p. 7.

Wigfull, James R.—
(I) An Early Sheffield School, THAS, vol, III, p. 336-343.
(II) Sheffield Grammar School, THAS, vol. IV, p. 283-300.

Smith, G. C. Moore—
Sheffield Grammar School; THAS, vol. IV, p. 145-160.

these three articles are all in the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society.

Leader, R. E. Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edn.; 1905.

Fitch, J. G. Schools Inquiry Commission Report, vol. XVIII.

City of Sheffield Endowed Charities Report, 1897 - this includes the 1828 Report which contains some interesting material on the Grammar School in the earlier days.

Laurie, A. P. Royal Commission on Secondary Education, vol. VII, p. 127.

Sadler, M. E. Report on Secondary and Higher Education in Sheffield, 1903.

P. J. W.

[KES Magazine, March 1948]