Sevenoaks School - in Literature

In Literature

• Sevenoaks Schoolmaster William Painter introduced his translation of William Fulke's Antiprognosticon (1560) with a letter written from Sevenoaks.
• The finding of William Sevenoke is described by William Lambarde in A Perambulation of Kent (1576).
• William Camden mentions the school and almshouses in Britannia (1586).
• A school tradition, cited in the prospectus and school history, maintains that Sevenoaks is the 'grammar school' of Jack Cade's speech in Henry VI Part 2, Act 4, scene 7. Jonathan Bate would appear to support this (The Genius of Shakespeare, 1997).
• William Sevenoke is one of Richard Johnson's Nine Worthies of London (1592).
• Daniel Defoe refers to the school in A tour through the whole island of Great Britain (1724-27).
• John Wesley preached 'at an open place near the Free-School', on Saturday 4 October, 1746. (Journal of the Rev John Wesley)
• In The Hastings Road (1906), Charles George Harper writes that the school and almshouses 'are generally thought by passing strangers to be a workhouse or a penitentiary. It will thus be gathered that they are not beautiful.'
• Maurice Henry Hewlett reflects on friendships of his schooldays in Lore of Proserpine (1913).
• The Sevenoaks education of Huang Ya Dong (Wang Y Tong) and the son of John Frederick Sackville and Giovanna Baccelli is mentioned in Vita Sackville-West's Knole and the Sackvilles (1922).
• Charlie Higson's fictional boarding school, Rowhurst (The Dead, 2010) was inspired by Sevenoaks.