| British History: Rugby School |
Rugby School is a boys' public school founded by Laurence Sheriff, a merchant grocer of London, in 1567. The school became unfit for use in 1748 and was rebuilt on its present site consisting of a school house, quad, chapel, and a magnificent playing field. The subsequent high reputation of the school stems from the headmastership of Thomas Arnold.
| Wikipedia: Rugby School |
| Rugby School | |
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| Motto | Orando Laborando (Latin"By praying, by working") |
| Established | 1567 |
| Type | Independent, Boarding school |
| Religion | Anglican |
| Headmaster | Patrick S J Derham MA |
| Founder | Lawrence Sheriff |
| Location | Rugby Warwickshire England  |
| Students | 831: 337 girls & 494 boys (2006) |
| Gender | Co-educational |
| Ages | 11 to 18 |
| Houses | 16 |
| Colours | Blue White Green
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| Former Pupils | Old Rugbeians |
| Website | www.rugbyschool.net |
| Coordinates: 52°13′17″N 1°09′17″W / 52.2214°N 1.1548°W | |
Rugby School, located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, is regarded as one of the UK's leading co-educational boarding schools and is one of the oldest public schools in England.
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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[1]. It is one of the nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868 and one of a handful of prominent English Public Schools that can be said to have created the ideal of the Victorian gentleman and the importance of public schools as the training ground for service in the Empire in the nineteenth century. 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 Arnold's Rugby. Still today it is one of the best known schools in the country and seen as a leading innovator in education (e.g. see its leading role in developing the Cambridge Pre-U).
Since Lawrence Sheriff lived in Rugby, the school was intended to be a free grammar school for the boys of that town. Gradually, however, as Rugby's fame spread it was no longer desirable to have 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.
Rugby School continues to offer a large number of scholarship places for outstanding students from the local community, who come from state (maintained) primary schools in the immediate vicinity of Rugby.[citation needed] The school's new Arnold Foundation has been established to enable it to offer similar support to children from outside the Rugby area. The core of the school (which contains School House, featured in Tom Brown's Schooldays) was completed in 1815 and is built around the Old Quad (quadrangle), with its fine and graceful Georgian architecture. Especially notable rooms are the Upper Bench (an intimate space with a book-lined gallery), the Old Hall of School House, and the Old Big School (which makes up one side of the quadrangle, and was once the location for teaching all junior pupils). Thomas Hughes (like his fictional hero, Tom Brown) 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.
The school's most famous headmaster was Dr. Thomas Arnold. Appointed in 1828 he executed many reforms to the school curriculum and administration and was immortalised in Thomas Hughes' book Tom Brown's School Days. It was Arnold's reforms, with their emphasis on sport, 'fair play' and the system of allocating responsibility to boys, that led the British Public School system towards the 'Muscular Christianity' ethos which drove the British Imperial expansion. Arnold's Rugby can be said to have created what we think of as the English Public School.
From 1828 to 1966
From 1980 to present
The game of Rugby 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 (renamed the Rugbeian Society) in 1895. There were no standard rules for football during Webb Ellis's time at Rugby (1816–1825) and most varieties involved carrying the ball. The games played at Rugby were organised by the students 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 (a former student, but not a contemporary of Webb Ellis) in October 1876 (four years after the death of Webb Ellis) in a letter to the school newspaper (The Meteor) whereby 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.[4] 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.
It is also fair to say that cross country running began at Rugby School. The Crick Run was the first such event of its type in the world, and is still a major annual event in the School's calendar.
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:
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Boys:
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Girls:
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Junior School:
There have been a number of notable Old Rugbeians including the purported father of the sport of Rugby William Webb Ellis, 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.
The Rugbeian Society is for former pupils at the School.[5] 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 common with most English public schools, Rugby has its own argot, a few words of which are listed below. Also, the Oxford "-er" abbreviation (e.g. Johnners, rugger, footer etc), prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875, is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School.[6]
"Floreat Rugbeia" is the traditional school song. While a boy's house, Tudor house had an alternate first verse of the Floreat which for more than two centuries by tradition they would sing by heart at Chapel contrary to all other houses of the school which would sing the official first verse of the Floreat. Members of Tudor House would then continue to sing the correct second and third verse of the Floreat which Older boys ensured that younger boys knew by heart. No other house memorised either versions of the Floreat. The girls now residing in Tudor house have not continued the boys' original tradition.
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 | British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rugby School". Read more |
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