Thetford Grammar School: Fourteen Centuries of Education

By David Seymour

Thetford Grammar School's formation is shrouded in mystery, but it may date back as far as 631. First re-founded by the Bishop of Norwich in 1114, the school was revitalised following the dissolution of the monasteries, and firmly re-established by an Act of Parliament in 1610 and then by a new foundation document in 1876. A Girls' School was set up alongside the ancient Boys' School in 1888 and both schools spent the middle years of the twentieth century as county council grammar schools, before their re-foundation as a co-educational independent school in 1981.
Written to coincide with the 450th anniversary of Thetford Grammar School's re-founding and drawing on the school's archives, David Seymour discusses four and a half centuries of governance, pupils, headteachers, ushers and assistant teachers, phases of building, and the development of the curriculum.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781784421410

David Seymour

David Seymour's Inter Alia was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. His poems have been included in three Best Canadian Poetry anthologies, shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award and used as song lyrics for The Warped 45's. David lives in Toronto, where he works in the ?lm industry.

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ABBREVIATIONS

The current co-educational independent Thetford Grammar School is customarily abbreviated to TGS but for convenience in this book school abbreviations are used as follows:

TGS – Thetford Grammar School (Boys), 631–1975

TGGS – Thetford Girls’ Grammar School, 1888–1975

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION – THE THREE AGES OF THE SCHOOL

FOUNDATION AND GOVERNANCE

SCHOOLMASTERS

USHERS

GIRLS’ SCHOOL FOUNDATION

HEADMISTRESSES

ASSISTANT MASTERS AND MISTRESSES

BUILDINGS

PUPILS

STAYING ON – SIXTH FORMS DEVELOP

CURRICULUM

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Old School Porch: eleventh-century carving representing the Biblical ‘Tree of Life’.

INTRODUCTION – THE THREE AGES OF THE SCHOOL

THE HISTORY of the school divides into three distinct periods. During the medieval period Thetford Grammar School (TGS) was a church school, possibly from as early as 631. From the twelfth century, in a school attached to the former cathedral site under the control of the Bishop of Norwich and overseen by a clerical Schoolmaster, pupils were educated for ordination and the pursuit of further knowledge.

The second period, beginning with the will of Sir Richard Fulmerston in 1566 and reinforced by an Act of Parliament in 1610, saw the construction of an endowed school under the control of Thetford Corporation and overseen by a clerical Schoolmaster. In the Elizabethan schoolroom, now Old School, all pupils followed an English education with the Usher, sometimes known as the ‘Second’, ‘English’ or ‘Under’ master, and those destined for the universities were taught Latin by the Schoolmaster.

The third age, which began with the dissolution of the 1610 arrangements in 1876, saw the site grow beyond the original school building to accommodate curriculum developments, to manage increases in pupil numbers and to include a Girls’ School (TGGS).

Watercolour sketch of Thetford Grammar School, 1848.

The first minute book of the trustees of the School and Hospital Foundation.

FOUNDATION AND GOVERNANCE

THERE MAY HAVE BEEN schooling on the site as early as the mid-seventh century under the East Anglian King Sigbert, whom the eighth-century historian Bede noted as having been converted to Christianity in Gaul and being keen to found a school for the education of boys in the study of letters. Where Sigbert’s bishop, Felix, established churches the priests had charge of the education crucial to the king’s policy for the development of Christianity. Thetford’s role as an ecclesiastical centre may have developed from this time and education may have been carried on in the vicinity of the current school for almost 1,400 years.

Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Thetford and later Norwich, left the first documentary evidence of a school in Thetford:

Herbert the bishop to his brethren and sons at Thetford. Know that I have restored to Bund, my dean, his schools at Thetford as completely and advantageously as he ever held them; and I order that no other schools shall be held there except his, or such as he has allowed to be held.

Bund’s control of these ‘schools’ may have dated from as early as 1091, the year of Losinga’s consecration as bishop. This letter, possibly of 1114, suggests that Bund’s tenure had been long but uncertain. The uncertainty may have derived from the occupation of the former cathedral site, now Old School, by Cluniac monks from 1104 to 1114, with their school for the education of oblates and boys from the nobility, or from a possible dispute about the ownership of schools in Thetford with Athselinus, a minor church official, rebuked by Losinga for an unspecified dispute with Bund. It was not unknown during this period for the right to run schools to be contested. Herbert’s episcopal colleague at Lincoln issued, sometime between 1110 and 1123, an order to the archdeacon of Huntingdon to impose silence on those holding unauthorised schools in Huntingdon. Another colleague, Roger of Salisbury, ordered that no one should conduct a school at Reading without the consent and goodwill of the abbey and convent.