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private school in Rugby, Warwickshire, England
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Rugby School is a public school (English private boarding school) for pupils aged 13–18, located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire in England.
Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. Up to 1667, the school remained in comparative obscurity. Its re-establishment by Thomas Arnold during his time as Headmaster, from 1828 to 1842, was seen as the forerunner of the Victorian public school. It was one of nine schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission of 1864 and later regulated as one of the seven schools included in the Public Schools Act 1868. Originally a boys' school, it became fully co-educational in 1992.
The school's alumni – or "Old Rugbeians" – include a UK prime minister, a French prime minister, several bishops, poets, scientists, writers and soldiers.
Rugby School is the birthplace of rugby football.
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. In the last few months of his life, Sheriff had drawn up a will which stipulated that his fortune should be used to found almshouses and a free grammar school "to serve chiefly for the children of Rugby and Brownsover... and next for such as be of other places hereunto adjoyneing.". Shortly before his death, Sheriff added a codicil to his will reducing the amount of money he left to the school, possibly due to a family financial problem, but instead leaving his eight acre Conduit Close estate in Middlesex: At the time this seemed like a poor exchange, as the estate consisted of undeveloped farmland on the edge of London, however, in time this endowment made Rugby School a wealthy institution due to the subsequent development of the area and rise in land values. The area of what is now the Rugby Estate includes much of what is now Great Ormond Street, Lamb's Conduit Street and Rugby Street in the London district of Bloomsbury.
Up to 1667, the school remained in comparative obscurity. Sheriff's endowment was not fully realized for some time, due to a challenge over the provisions of the will from the Howkins family, to whom Sheriff was related through his sister, Bridget. Its history during that trying period is characterised mainly by a series of lawsuits between the Howkins family, 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. Under the headmastership of Henry Holyoake (from 1688 to 1731) the school became more than simply a local concern, and began to take on national importance. By the end of the 17th century, there were pupils from every part of England attending the school.
The school was originally based in a wooden schoolhouse on Church Street opposite St Andrew's Church, which incorporated Lawrence Sheriff's former house. By the 1740s this building was in poor condition, and the school looked to relocate to new premises. In 1750, the school moved to its current location to the south of the town centre, when it purchased a former Manor House at the south of High Street; this became the Master's house, a new schoolhouse was built alongside. The current school buildings date from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Henry Ingles, who was Headmaster between 1794 and 1806, was known for his strict discipline and gained the nickname "The Black Tiger". His time as Headmaster is most notable for the 'Great Rebellion' of 1797: It started when Ingles heard one of the boys shoot a cork gun, and the boy told him that Mr Rowell, a grocer, had supplied the gunpowder. Mr Rowell denied this, and as a result the boy Astley was flogged by Ingles, the boys retaliated by smashing Mr Rowell's windows and Ingles insisted that the boys pay for the damage. This provoked a full-scale riot, in which the boys blew off doors, smashed windows and burned furniture and books. As the other Masters were away, Ingles called on help from the townsfolk. A party of recruiting soldiers and some townsfolk advanced on the rioters, who retreated onto a moated island in the school grounds. The Riot Act was read out by a local justice of the peace, calling on the boys to surrender, and while this caused a distraction a group of soldiers waded across the moat from the rear and took the boys prisoner.
Rugby School's most famous headmaster was Thomas Arnold, from 1828 to 1842, whose emphasis on moral and religious principle, was widely admired and was seen as the blueprint for Victorian public schools. Arnold's period as headmaster is immortalised in Thomas Hughes' 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days. In the Victorian period, Rugby School saw several further Headmasters of some distinction, these included Frederick Temple (1858–1869) who would later become the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Percival (1887–1895) after whom the Percival Guildhouse is named, and Herbert Armitage James (1895–1910)
In 1845, a committee of Rugby schoolboys, William Delafield Arnold, W. W. Shirley and Frederick Hutchins, wrote the "Laws of Football as Played At Rugby School", the first published set of laws for any code of football.
Rugby was one of the nine prestigious schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission of 1861–64 (the schools under scrutiny being Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Shrewsbury, Westminster, and Winchester, and two day schools: St Paul's and Merchant Taylors). Rugby went on to be included in the Public Schools Act 1868, which ultimately related only to the seven boarding schools.
From the early days of the school the pupils were divided into "Foundationers" i.e. boys who lived in Rugby and surrounding villages who received free schooling, as per Sheriff's original bequest, and "Non-Foundationers", boys from outside the Rugby area who paid fees and were boarders. Non-Foundationers were admitted from the early history of the school as they helped to pay the bills. Gradually, as the school's reputation grew, fee-paying Non-Foundationers became dominant and local boys benefited less and less from Sheriff's original intentions. By the latter half of the 19th century it was considered no longer desirable to have local boys attending a prestigious public school and so a new school – Lawrence Sheriff Grammar School – was founded in 1878 in order to continue Sheriff's original bequest for a free school for local boys.
On several occasions in the late 19th century Rugby School was visited by the French educator Pierre de Coubertin, who would later cite the school as one of the main inspirations for his most notable achievement, the founding of the modern Olympic Games in 1896.
In 1975 three girls were admitted to the Upper School with another ten joining in 1976. The first girls' house opened in 1976, another opened in 1979 and two more in the 1980s. By 1989 there were 100 girls studying at Rugby School. In 1993 the school became fully co-educational when the first cohort of 13-year-old girls arrived. In the 1990s three boys' houses were converted into girls' houses with one becoming a dedicated sixth form house. In 1995 Rugby appointed its first Head Girl, Louise Woolcock, who appeared on the front page of The Times. By 1998 girls were part of all year groups and the last girls' house opened in 2003.
Today there are over 800 students at Rugby School, which has 15 houses (13 boarding, 2 day).
In 2017, Rugby School expanded internationally with the opening of Rugby School Thailand, its first overseas school as part of Rugby School Global. The Rugby School Group was subsequently formed in 2019 following the addition of Bilton Grange. Led by Rugby School, the Group is an educational family of independent schools across the UK and internationally.
UK Prep Schools:
International Schools:
The game of Rugby football owes its name to the School, first popularised globally following the 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days which included a long section describing a football match at the School.
Playing football at the School began in the late 1700s. The legend of William Webb Ellis and the 1823 origin of the game is commemorated by a plaque on the school grounds. The story is that Webb Ellis was the first to take possession of the football and run with it, and thus invent the distinctive ball-handling football code. However, the sole source of the story is Matthew Bloxam, a former pupil 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 he quotes an unknown friend relating the story to him. He elaborated on the story four years later in another letter to The Meteor, but shed no further light on its source. Credit for innovations in the 19th century game are also given to students James 'Jem' Mackie and Charles Stuart Dakyns.
There were no written rules for football at Rugby School in Webb Ellis's time (1816–1825) and most varieties involved carrying the ball. The games played at Rugby were organised by the pupils and not the masters, the rules being a matter of custom and not written down. They were frequently changed and modified with each new intake of students.The account given in Tom Brown's School Days was of a match played in the late 1830s era.
Richard Lindon, a boot and shoemaker who had premises across the street from the school's main entrance in Lawrence Sheriff Street, is credited with the invention of the "oval" rugby ball, the rubber inflatable bladder and the brass hand pump.
The School's football laws were first put in writing in 1845. The game was then taken up by other schools and the first rugby football clubs emerged in the 1860s. This lineage from football at Rugby School continued into the 1870s with the founding rules of rugby union, American football, Canadian football and later rugby league. Rugby School 'old boy' Tom Wills had earlier co-founded Australian rules football in Melbourne in 1859.
From 1870 until 1876, the School's jerseys for matches against external opponents featured red, white, and blue stripes, after which they were changed to white jerseys with the School crest.
Rugby fives is a handball game, similar to squash, played in an enclosed court. It has similarities with Winchester fives (a form of Wessex 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 Grammar, 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 (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles), 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.
The school has produced a number of cricketers who have gone onto play Test and first-class cricket. The school has played host to two major matches, the first of which was a Twenty20 match between Warwickshire and Glamorgan in the 2013 Friends Life t20. The second match was a List-A one-day match between Warwickshire and Sussex in the 2015 Royal London One-Day Cup, though it was due to host a match in the 2014 competition, however this was abandoned. In the 2015 match, William Porterfield scored a century, with a score of exactly 100. Warwickshire will return to Rugby School in 2024 to play three matches in the One-Day Cup.
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 1992. The school community is divided into houses.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Rugby School”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.