St. Peter's Churchyard School Around 1554 To 1863
Following the extinction of Darley Abbey, on 21 May 1554, Queen Mary I by a Royal Charter, and in return for a payment of £260 13s 4d, granted the corporation of Derby several properties and endowments which had belonged to Darley Abbey, the College of All Saints, St Michael's Church, and some other suppressed chantries and gilds, for the foundation of "a Free Grammar School, for the instruction and education of boys and youths in the said town of Derby for ever to be maintained by the Bailiffs and Burgesses of the same town."
The new Free Grammar School was established in a purpose-built building next to St Peter's Church, Derby. The school remained at this site until it moved to St Helen's House in 1863. In the late 20th century, this building was for some time part of the Derby Heritage Centre and is now a hairdresser's.
The school held a closed exhibition (a form of scholarship) worth £50 a year at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. At any one time, this could be held by one old boy of the school, who had the title at Emmanuel College of Exhibitioner. (Until the 1930s, £50 was a substantial sum, usually more than the annual wage of a farm labourer.)
While the astronomer John Flamsteed was at the Free Grammar School in the 1660s, parents were expected to provide boys with books, quill-pens, and wax candles to use when daylight failed. At that time, most masters of the school were Puritans.
Read more about this topic: Derby School, Refounding With Royal Charter, 1554
Famous quotes containing the words peter, churchyard and/or school:
“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!”
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“He had first discovered a propensity for savagery in the acrid lavatories of a minor English public school where he used to press the heads of the new boys into the ceramic bowl and pull the flush upon them to drown their gurgling protests.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)