Religion
Gresham's is a Church of England foundation, but the school is open to all denominations and religions. Services are a focal point of the School's life, with a morning assembly in Chapel on four mornings of the week. Pupils not in the Sixth form have an extra morning in chapel, whilst the sixth form have another tutor period (Thursday morning). All years have a tutor period on Wednesday. The Saturday morning service is a choral practice, and Holy Communion may be taken on Sundays. There are also formal prayers in most boarding houses in the evenings.
Non-Anglicans are excused communion services on Sundays, and Roman Catholics attend mass on Sunday at the church of Our Lady and St Joseph in Sheringham.
If wished, boys and girls may be prepared at the School for Confirmation into the Church of England, which is usually conducted by the Bishop of Norwich or one of his suffragan Bishops.
The school was designated as having a Church of England religious character by the Designation of Schools Having a Religious Character (Independent Schools) (England) Order 2004 (No 72).
The tune called Woodlands, the usual setting for the hymn Lift Up Your Hearts!, was composed for the school in 1916 by Walter Greatorex, a Gresham's master, who succeeded another composer, Geoffrey Shaw, as the school's Director of Music.
A new school chapel, by the Scottish architect Maxwell Ayrton, was built between 1912 and 1916, and is now a listed building. The foundation stone of the chapel was laid by the chairman of governors, Sir Edward Busk, on 8 June 1912. The Chapel bell, cast in Whitechapel in 1915, is inscribed with the words Ring in the Christ that is to be, Donum Dedit J. R. E.. The last words stand for "the gift of J. R. Eccles" (at the time second master, later headmaster), while the first eight are the last line of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem Ring Out, Wild Bells (1850). The Gresham family motto, Fiat voluntas tua ('Thy will be done') appears on the chapel's main door.
Old Greshamians include several bishops, David Hand, Archbishop of Papua New Guinea, and John Bradburne, a candidate for canonization.
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Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“If ... we admit a divinity, why not divine worship? and if worship, why not religion to teach this worship? and if a religion, why not the Christian, if a better cannot be assigned, and it be already established by the laws of our country, and handed down to us from our forefathers?”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)