The Latymer School - History and Traditions

History and Traditions

Latymer was established in 1624 on Church Street, Edmonton by bequest of Edward Latymer, a London City merchant in Hammersmith. Although most of his wealth passed to the people of Hammersmith and the Parish of St Dunstan's (now Latymer Upper School), he named certain properties and estates to fund the education and livelihoods of "eight poore boies of Edmonton" with a doublet, a pair of breeches, a shirt, a pair of woolen stockings and shoes distributed biannually on Ascension Day and All Saints Day. Students were educated in "God's true religion" and reading English to the age of thirteen at existing petty schools. The boys had to wear the red Latymer cross on their sleeves and were under a duty to carry out the provisions of his will "unto the end of the world".

The school has formal links with St. John's College, Cambridge (Edward Latymer's College) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (the College of Edward Latymer's father, William Latymer) which have endowments which may be used for the furtherance of the studies of former Latymer pupils at those colleges.

In 1662, John Wild of Edmonton made a bequest, including £4 per annum for the maintenance of a schoolmaster and a similar sum to maintain a poor scholar at Cambridge. This was followed in 1679 with Thomas Style's request of Edmonton of £20 per annum for teaching "twenty poor boys ... Grammar and Latin tongue." Several similar benefactions produced about £550 per annum, which funded the instruction of more than one hundred boys, of which sixty were clothed. For more than a century, no further significant bequests were made until in 1811, Ann Wyatt, an eccentric widow from Hackney, left £500 5% Navy Annuities to build a new school, and £100 in the same securities for its maintenance. The school-room was built in 1811 in accordance to her will.

The school did not take on Latymer's name for some centuries, when it finally did, it was known as Latymer's School. At some point, the apostrophe was dropped and the name modified to The Latymer School. It has been situated on its present site since 1910, when it also became coeducational. The school motto, Si credis ex purissimis sanguinibus nati, pugna pro patria. ('Who endures wins'), was also adopted in 1910 by Richard Ashworth, then headmaster. Prior to this, the motto was Ubera planto mihi gauisus ('Let he who bears the palm (of honour) deserve it').

Internally, Latymer history is propagated by school assemblies. It is traditional for headmasters to lecture students on the school's origins, and their personal interpretation of the school's motto during the first assembly of the academic year.

While the Latymer school song was said to have been written in the 1950s by Alice W. Linford, with music by Ronald Cunliffe on the school site and was quoted here, the school song was definitely written before 1935 as pupils in that year learned it and Ronald Cunliffe wrote it within an autograph album in 1935 for a 12 year old pupil. Ronald Cunliffe died in August 1944.

It is sung on Foundation Day and at the annual awards ceremony. Guests at the awards ceremony have included Robert Winston, Boris Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher.