Schools

 Summary. The medieval song school evolved into the Cathedral School, Bishop Smyth’s 15th‑century grammar school became King Edward VI School, and Thomas Minors’s 17th‑century foundation for poor boys lasted until the 19th-century.

1. The Medieval Song School and the Origins of the Cathedral School

          A song school almost certainly existed in Lichfield from the 12th-century.  Around 1190 a subchanter, the assistant to a precentor, ran a song school. A cathedral chancellor, first mentioned in 1191,[1] would have had oversight of some kind of school. The boys lived at home or lodged in the Close. The earliest implicit mention of a school is Bishop Alexander de Stavenby, 1224-38, reminding that learned and virtuous men should be appointed to the schools of the diocese. Clearly, some did not see education needed attention.[2] From 1265, the schoolboys were given various endowments for their maintenance. By 1496 they were required to live in the Close, and around 1527 they lived in a house on the south side of The Close where now stands the cathedral offices. By 1559, a chorister was entitled to an annual pension of £3 6s. 8d. for five years after his voice had broken to enable him to attend a grammar school. By the 1620s a schoolroom was built above the adjoining gateways of two canonical houses on the northwest side of The Close.[3] It had a distinctive gateway.

AI rendition of a drawing of the gateway to the Chorister's house and school 1773[4]

          Master Peter was a schoolmaster of Lichfield, 1272, Master Matthew was recorded in 1312–13, and Ralph, schoolmaster, in 1335.  William Bishop, schoolmaster, was admitted to the Lichfield guild of St. Mary and St. John the Baptist in 1440. There was a grammar master, John Mercer, in the town in 1461, and a schoolmaster, Ralph Gydnall, in 1466. A schoolhouse at Greenhill was mentioned in the late 1320s.[5]  

In 1817, a choristers' school was established in The Close. The choristers were taught reading, writing, and arithmetic and had a specially appointed master in charge. In 1866, a newly-appointed schoolmaster was given permission to take up to 14 probationers in addition to the choristers. In 1880, Lichfield Chapter built a schoolroom in Stone Yard off Dam Street. From 1892 the master took boarders, which enabled the chapter to draw choristers from a wider area. The school remained small; in 1905 there were 17 boys, of whom 6 were boarders. The school buildings then comprised two houses in Dam Street, occupied by the master and the boarders, and the schoolroom.  A new two-storeyed schoolhouse was opened in Stone Yard in 1913. By the late 1930s, there were 36 boys at the school receiving free education at the chapter's expense.

Lichfield Cathedral School

In 1942, the school was reopened in no. 12 the Close, previously the Chancellor’s house, as a day and boarding preparatory school and called St. Chad's cathedral school. Fee-paying non-choristers were admitted. From 1955 the school occupied the bishop's palace. Girls were admitted from 1975. In 1981, it became fully independent and changed its name to Lichfield Cathedral School. In 2004, it extended intake to the secondary sector. In 2010, the first Sixth Form classes began.

The Grammar School

Before 1495 there was no grammar school at the cathedral or in the town with free instruction in grammar. This changed under Bishop William Smyth, 1493-96, who on 3 November 1495 provided a hospital for poor, aged men, originally known as the Priory of St John, and on the same site built a free grammar school. The statutes were presented in the Chapel of St John's Hospital. In 1495, Lichfield was only one of five cathedral towns, out of 21, which had an endowed grammar school where teaching was wholly or partly without charge.[6] Edward VI, 1547-53, endowed the grammar school paying £6 13s 4p each year to the schoolmaster and £5 10s 4p to the usher.[7] In 1577, the school moved to a building over the other side of St John Street which had been purchased by wealthy citizens and donated for the purposes of being used as a free grammar school for boys. The school separated from the hospital in 1692. It was called Lichfield Grammar School and overtime the school had occupied three buildings. In 1903, the school opened in its fourth and current location in Upper St John Street, and is now King Edward VI School.

AI rendition of a drawing of St John’s hospital and school.[8]   

AI rendition of a drawing of the Interior of Lichfield School

AI rendition of a drawing of a very early Lichfield Grammar School.   

 

                         AI rendition of Lichfield Grammar School 1760

AI Lichfield Grammar School from Lomax 1819⁶   

Lichfield Grammar School 1833 School is behind the wall.

AI Lichfield school 1835   

Lichfield Grammar School building today. It is now the Lichfield District Council Chamber.

Plaque by the old grammar school on St John Street.

3. Minors’s School, 1670–1876.

Thomas Minors founded a school for poor boys in 1670. The schoolhouse was a four-bayed, two-storeyed brick building that stood at the corner of Bore Street and St. John Street. The schoolroom was on the ground floor at the west end of the building, while the master had half the house, and the garden, rent free. By the 18th-century, the school was Anglican. In 1826, the school's trustees increased the number of free places to 60, and converted upper rooms into a second schoolroom. In 1846, a night school was being held. By now the building was inadequate and the school closed in 1876. Students transferred to the Grammar School. Samuel Johnson might have been privately tutored at this school. The building was demolished in 1914.

AI rendition of a drawing of Minors School, Buckler[9]

4. Other Early Schools and Charitable Foundations

          In the 1670s, a charity founded by Humphrey Terrick was paying for the education of poor children. From the 17th-century, small dame schools occurred in the town. 1649, a schoolmistress had a place in St Mary’s church. 1675, a tailor’s shop was a schoolhouse. A school in Dam Street had connections with Samual Johnson. Stowe house was used in 1770. The Madras school (senior pupils, some from the cathedral school, taught juniors) for boys in Frog Lane, opened in 1809, and was both a day and a Sunday school. A Sunday school was established at St. Chad's in 1821 with over 100 pupils in 1833 and over 200 children by 1846. A privately funded high school for girls was established in 1892. It became a county school in 1916 and a grammar school in 1920.  In the late 1980s there were 9 primary schools and 3 secondary schools in Lichfield. 

[1] Dugdale, Mon. vi(3), 1256; S.H.C. 1924, p. xxvi

[2] N. Orme, Medieval Schools from Roman Britain to Renaissance England, (New Haven and London: 2006), 203. The reference given is Councils and Synods II, i, 211.

[3] M W Greenslade and R B Pugh (eds.) A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 3, (London, 1970). 

[4] S. Shaw, The history and antiquities of Staffordshire, Volume 1. ( London: 1798) who copied from Gale, 1720.

[5] M. W. Greenslade (ed.)  'Lichfield: Education', in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, (London, 1990), 170-184.

[6] N. Orme (2006) 245. See note 2.

[7] T. Lomax, Account of City and Cathedral, (Lichfield: 1819), 169.

[8] V. H. Darwin 1864.

[9] J. C. Buckler, 1822