Rugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire,
England.
Rugby School is a registered charity and is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.
The influence of Rugby and its pupils and masters in the nineteenth century was enormous
and in many ways the stereotype of the English public school is a reworking of Thomas Arnold's
Rugby.
It is one of the original nine English public schools defined by the Public Schools Act
1868, It is one of the best-known and most expensive schools in the country.
"Floreat Rugbeia" is the traditional school song.
History
Early challenges
Rugby School was founded in 1567 as a provision in the will of Lawrence Sheriff, who had made
his fortune supplying groceries to Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Since Lawrence Sheriff lived in Rugby and the neighbouring Brownsover, the school was
intended to be a free grammar school for the boys of those towns.
Up to 1667, the school remained in comparative obscurity.
Its history during that trying period is characterised mainly by a series of lawsuits between descendants
of the founder, who tried to defeat the intentions of the testator, and the masters and trustees,
who tried to carry them out.
A final decision was handed down in 1667, confirming the findings of a commission in
favour of the trust, and henceforth the school maintained a steady growth.
Growth It was no longer desirable to have only local
boys attending and the nature of the school shifted, and so a new school – Lawrence
Sheriff Grammar School – was founded in 1878 to continue Lawrence Sheriff's original
intentions; that school receives a substantial proportion of the endowment income from Lawrence
Sheriff's estate every year.
The core of the school was completed in 1815 and is built around the Old Quad, with its
Georgian architecture.
Especially notable rooms are the Upper Bench, the Old Hall of School House, and the Old
Big School.
Thomas Hughes once carved his name onto the hands of the school clock, situated on a tower
above the Old Quad.
The polychromatic school chapel, new quadrangle, Temple Reading Room, Macready Theatre and
Gymnasium were designed by the well-known Victorian Gothic revival architect William
Butterfield in 1875, and the smaller Memorial Chapel was dedicated in 1922.
Cartel In 2005, Rugby 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.
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."
Today Rugby School continues to offer scholarship
places for outstanding students from the local community, who come from state primary schools
in the immediate vicinity of Rugby.
The school's new Arnold Foundation has been established to enable it to offer similar
support to children from outside the Rugby area.
Headmasters
Thomas Arnold
Rugby's most famous headmaster was Thomas Arnold, appointed in 1828, he executed many
reforms to the school curriculum and administration.
Arnold's reputation and the school's reputation was immortalised through Thomas Hughes' book
Tom Brown's School Days.
David Newsome writes about the new educational methods employed by Arnold in his book, 'Godliness
and Good Learning'.
He calls the morality practised at Arnold's school muscular Christianity.
Dr. George Mosse, former professor of History in University of Wisconsin-Madison, lectured
on Arnold's time at Rugby.
According to Mosse, Thomas Arnold created an institution which fused religious and moral
principles, gentlemanly conduct, and learning based on self-discipline.
These morals were socially enforced through the "Gospel of work."
The object of education was to produced "the Christian gentleman," a man with good outward
appearance, playful but earnest, industrial, manly, honest, virginal pure, innocent, and
responsible.
John Percival
In 1888 the appointment of Marie Bethell Beauclerc by Percival was the first appointment of a
female teacher in an English boys' public school and the first time shorthand had been
taught in any such school.
The shorthand course was popular with one hundred boys in the classes.
William Webb Ellis
The game of Rugby football owes its name to the school.
The legend of William Webb Ellis and the origin of the game is commemorated by a plaque.
The story has been known to be a myth since it was first investigated by the Old Rugbeian
Society in 1895.
There were no standard rules for football during Webb Ellis's time at Rugby and most
varieties involved carrying the ball.
The games played at Rugby were organised by the pupils and not the masters, the rules
of the game played at Rugby and elsewhere were a matter of custom and were not written
down.
They were frequently changed and modified with each new intake of students.
The sole source of the story is credited to one Matthew Bloxam in October 1876 in a letter
to the school newspaper wherein he quotes some unknown friend relating the story to
him.
He elaborated on the story some three years later in another letter to The Meteor, but
shed no further light on its source.
Richard Lindon is credited for the invention of the "oval" rugby ball, the rubber inflatable
bladder and the brass hand pump.
Lindon, a Boot and Shoemaker, had premises immediately across the street from the School's
main entrance in Lawrence Sheriff Street.
No doubt the boys of Rugby School had significant input into their required design.
Houses Rugby School has both day and boarding-pupils,
the latter in the majority.
Originally it was for boys only, but girls have been admitted to the sixth form since
1975.
It went fully co-educational in 1995.
The school community is divided into houses: Junior School:
Marshall House Information
Age range: 11 – 18 Day pupils: 77 boys, 64 girls
Annual day fees: £19,605; Juniors £11,550 Full boarding pupils: 369 boys, 296 girls
Annual full boarding fees: £31,245 Total pupils: 446 boys, 360 girls
Including 6th form/FE: 194 boys, 168 girls Staff numbers: 100 full-time – 9 part-time
Method of entry: Common Entrance, Interview, Scholarship or bursary exam
Professional affiliations: HMC Religious affiliation: Church of England
Alumni
There have been a number of notable Old Rugbeians including the purported father of the sport
of Rugby William Webb Ellis, the inventor of Australian rules football Tom Wills, the
war poets Rupert Brooke and John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,
author and mathematician Lewis Carroll, poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold, the author
and social critic Salman Rushdie and the Irish writer and republican Francis Stuart.
Matthew Arnold's father Thomas Arnold, was a headmaster of the school.
An OR seven-a-side rugby team was invited to compete in the inaugural Old Boys Sevens
tournament in June 2010, hosted by the Old Silhillians, the former pupils' association
of Solihull School.
Rugbeian Society The Rugbeian Society is for former pupils
at the School.
An Old Rugbeian is sometimes referred to as an OR.
The purposes of the society are to encourage and help Rugbeians in interacting with each
other and to strengthen the ties between ORs and the school.
in 2010 the Rugbeians reached the semi-finals of the Public Schools' Old Boys' Sevens tournament,
hosted by the Old Silhillians to celebrate the 450th anniversary of fellow Warwickshire
public school, Solihull School.
Rugby Fives
Rugby Fives is a handball game, similar to squash, played in an enclosed court.
It has similarities with Winchester Fives and Eton Fives.
It is most commonly believed to be derived from Wessex Fives, a game played by Thomas
Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby, who had played Wessex Fives when a boy at Lord Weymouth's
Grammer, now Warminster School.
The open court of Wessex Fives, built in 1787, is still in existence at Warminster School
although it has fallen out of regular use.
Rugby Fives is played between two players or between two teams of two players each,
the aim being to hit the ball above a 'bar' across the front wall in such a way that the
opposition cannot return it before a second bounce.
The ball is slightly larger than a golf ball, leather-coated and hard.
Players wear leather padded gloves on both hands, with which they hit the ball.
Rugby Fives continues to have a good following with tournaments being run nationwide, presided
over by the Rugby Fives Association.
See also List of schools in the West Midlands
Four Rugby Boys References
External links Rugby School official website