Wisbech Grammar School - Uniform and Houses

Uniform and Houses

The school has a strict uniform policy of blazers, shirts and ties for boys, and blazers, blouses and skirts for girls in the first five years. Sixth form students wear a different uniform more akin to a business suit. The school has four houses, named after significant figures in the history of the school: Clarkson (red), named after Thomas Clarkson, the school's most famous alumnus, Holmes (yellow), named after William Holmes, a 17th-century benefactor, Peckover (blue), named after the Peckover family, a Quaker banking family which donated Harecroft House to the school, and Sparks (green), named after Beatrice Sparks, the first headmistress of the Girls' High School. The school houses compete in a variety of academic, musical and sporting settings. Ties and badges are awarded for service to the house, and a full school colours tie can also be awarded for service to the school.

The present school houses are an amalgamation of houses from the boys' Grammar and girls' High schools; in 1971, the houses were named Parke-Southwell, Peckover-Crane, Clarkson-Dennis and Holmes-Sparks. Thomas Parke and John Crane were 17th-century benefactors of the Grammar school, John Dennis was a Wisbech solicitor who was a governor of the Girls' High School between 1904–1932 and Alfred Southwell was mayor of Wisbech in 1903, who chaired the committee formed to set up the school and was subsequently the first chairman of the governors. The Southwell family, incidentally, once owned Bevis Hall, the manor in Wisbech St Mary which once held jurisdiction over the land on North Brink on which Harecroft House is sited.