Rugby School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rugby School, located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, is one of the oldest public schools in England and is one of the major co-educational boarding schools in the country.
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. It is one of the nine "great" English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868.
Since Lawrence Sheriff lived in Rugby, the school was intended to be a free grammar school for the boys of that town. Gradually, however, the nature of the school shifted to become fee-paying, and so a new school – Lawrence Sheriff Grammar School – was founded to continue Lawrence Sheriff's original intentions; that school receives a substantial proportion of the endowment income from Lawrence Sheriff's estate every year. In addition, 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. The school's new Arnold Foundation has been established to enable it to offer similar support to children from outside the Rugby area.
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. Since then, this system has been copied around the world, so Arnold is effectively the father of secondary education.
commemorates the exploit of
William Webb Ellis
who with a fine disregard for the rules of football
as played in his time
first took the ball in his arms and ran with it
thus originating the distinctive feature of
the rugby game.
A.D. 1823
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. Factual evidence for rugby origination seems logically to point to hand passing and running facets of the Maori game Ki-o-Rahi[1] being combined with the Public Schools kicking game which led to the development of rugby union. 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 organized 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. Richard Lindon a Boot and Shoemaker had premises immediately across the street from Rugby Schools main entrance in Lawrence Sheriff Street. No doubt the boys of Rugby School had significant input into their required design.
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 polychrome school chapel and new quadrangle were designed by the well-known Victorian Gothic revival architect William Butterfield in 1875. Lord Peter Wimsey, the private investigator created by Dorothy L. Sayers, rather unkindly referred to the school as little more than a railway junction (see David Cannadine (1994) Aspects of Aristocracy).
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.
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[edit] Houses of Rugby School
The school community is divided into houses:
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Boys:
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Girls:
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Junior School:
- Marshall House
[edit] Information
- Age range: 11 - 18
- Day pupils: 77 boys 64 girls
- Annual day fees: £15,120 - £15,120
- Full boarding pupils: 369 boys 296 girls
- Annual full boarding fees: £23,835 - £23,835
- 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
[edit] Alumni of Rugby School
Notable Old Rugbeians (ORs) include:
- Sir Alexander John Arbuthnot, KCSI, writer
- Matthew Arnold, Victorian poet and critic (son of Headmaster Dr Thomas Arnold)
- Faris Badwan, aka Faris Rotter, Vocalist from band The Horrors
- Robert Barton, Irish lawyer and statesman who worked on the Anglo-Irish Treaty
- William Bateson, English geneticist
- Charles Bowen, 1st Baron Bowen, a lawyer and judge
- Humphry Bowen, British botanist and chemist
- Sir Charles Brett, architectural historian
- Rupert Brooke, English poet
- Lewis Carroll, see under Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
- Neville Chamberlain, politician and former Prime Minister
- Arthur Hugh Clough, English poet
- Tom Cowan, Bassist from band The Horrors
- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, famous for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- William Webb Ellis, the credited inventor of rugby football
- Harry Paget Flashman, fictional Victorian anti-hero
- Henry Watson Fowler, English lexicographer, author of Fowler's Modern English Usage
- George Joachim Goschen, 1st Viscount Goschen, Liberal Unionist statesman and businessman
- Dan Haigh, Bassist in the rock band Fightstar
- Robert Hardy, English stage and film actor
- Sir Charles Hawtrey, Victorian era stage actor
- Anthony Horowitz, English writer
- Fenton John Anthony Hort, English theologian
- Alan Howarth, Baron Howarth of Newport, British Politician
- Thomas Hughes, English lawyer and author of Tom Brown's School Days
- Marmaduke Hussey, former BBC Chairman
- Hugh Johnson (wine writer), British wine writer
- John Arthur Godley, 1st Baron Kilbracken, British civil servant
- Pete Kember, Popular musician
- Tom King, Baron King of Bridgwater, British politician
- Walter Savage Landor, English writer and poet
- Ian Lang, Baron Lang of Monkton, British politician
- Wyndham Lewis, British painter and author
- Crawford Murray MacLehose, Baron MacLehose of Beoch, the 25th Governor of Hong Kong
- William Charles Macready, English stage actor
- John Gillespie Magee, Junior, Anglo-American poet and aviator
- Sir Charles Tertius Mander, first baronet, industrialist and public servant
- David Marr, British psychologist
- Robin Milford, British musician
- Andrew Mitchell, British Conservative politician and Shadow Secretary of State for International Aid and Development
- Sydney Nicholson, British musician
- Christopher Orlebar, British Concorde pilot and author
- Hubert Parker, Baron Parker of Waddington, Lord Chief Justice of England 1958-1971
- Luke Pebody, British mathematician and child prodigy
- Arthur Ernest Percival, British general who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese
- Arthur Ransome, British children's author
- Andrew Rawnsley, British political journalist
- Sir Harry Ricardo, a foremost designer of the internal combustion engine and patentee of the two-stroke engine
- Salman Rushdie, author and essayist, Booker Prize winner for Midnight's Children
- Adnan Sami, Indian Singer, Actor, and Composer
- George Mitchell Seabroke, British astronomer
- Augustus Shears, clergyman who translated part of the Prayer Book into Burmese
- Henry John Stephen Smith, Irish mathematician
- J.K. Stanford, English author
- Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby, prominent 19th century statesman
- Richard Henry Tawney, one of Britain's leading Christian Socialist thinkers and writers, and a prominent British Economic and Social Historian
- William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War, and an influential radical thinker, a father of the post-war Welfare State
- Andrew Turner, British politician
- William Henry Waddington, French statesman (eventually Prime Minister of France)
- Alex Westaway, Guitarist and singer in the rock band Fightstar
- Tom Wills, the inventor of Australian rules football
[edit] Rugby School slang
In common with most English public schools, Rugby has its own argot, a few words of which are listed below.
- Bags: Sporting colours (particularly 'The Holder of Bigside Bags', the Captain of the Running Eight)
- Beak: Teacher
- Bodger: Headmaster
- Boomer: Chapel Bell
- Bug: Library
- Copy Award for exceptional work
- Dics: House prayers or talks
- Distinction: Award for slightly less exceptional work than a Copy
- Levee or Pig: Senior school prefect
- Old Guard: Sports team of teachers
- Pig Hut run: Physical punishment of running to Levee hut
- Pontines: 2nd XV rugby pitch
- Schtig: deregatory slang for local resident, normally wearing sports clothing and/or a baseball cap
- Sixth: House prefect
- Speckle: To sack someone from being a House Sixth
- Stodge: School tuck shop
- Stripe: To sack someone from being a Levee (the Levee tie is striped)
- Tanner or Loser: Day-boy (from 'Town House')
- Tick: To salute a Beak in the street, by lifting an index finger to shoulder level
- Topos: Lavatory (from Greek τόπος, meaning 'a place')
- Tosh: The old 66 2/3 yard open-air swimming pool, also used as a skating rink in winter, demolished by the School Governors in 1989 and replaced with a basket-ball court and a smaller indoor swimming pool. In some houses a name given to a large communal shower room. Also, a bath (sb.) or to take a bath
- Wagger: Waste paper basket
- XXII (the twenty-two): Second school cricket team
