St. Saviour's Grammar School
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St. Saviour’s Grammar School was a free grammar school located in the borough of Southwark, south of the River Thames in London, England. It existed in one form or another from 1559 until 1967.
[edit] History
The name is from the parish of St. Saviour’s which was formed in 1543 from the amalgamation of St. Margaret’s and St. Mary Magdalen’s parishes. The parish had adopted the name St. Saviour’s from the recently dissolved abbey of St. Saviour in nearby Bermondsey. The parish then leased the old Catholic St. Mary Overie church, thereafter referred to as St. Saviour’s Church (which was destined to later become Southwark Cathedral after 1905). In 1559, St. Saviour’s parish sold a quantity of silver plate to fund a new 60-year lease on the church from Lady Day, dated June 6, 1559. A condition of the lease was that the parish establish within two years a building and employ a schoolmaster for a free grammar school. In the interim, the parish leased space in the old St. Margaret church building, funded by renting out Lady Chapel to a baker and selling the vestments and brass vessels.
On May 16, 1562 the parishioners paid £42 for a thousand-year lease from Matthew Smith on a building associated with the Green Dragon Inn, which previously had been the estate of Lady Cobham. Under the first schoolmaster Christopher Ockland, the school moved into this new site just south of St. Saviour’s Church (subsequently the site of Borough Market).
The St. Saviour’s Grammar School received a Charter from Queen Elizabeth I, sealed on June 4, 1562. The event was commemorated on a foundation stone still existing today (although moved from site to site and now situated at St. Olave’s Grammar School in Orpington, Kent).
The chief figure of the Board of Governors was a church warden, Thomas Cure, who was the Queen’s Saddler and lived adjacent to the northwest corner of St. Saviour’s Church. The High Master (headmaster) was paid £20 per year and initially only boys from St. Saviour’s parish could be admitted for a fee of 2s. 6d, while those from St. Olave’s or other parishes could pay a fee to the High Master to arrange for a teacher for their instruction. (St. Olave’s parish established their own Grammar School in 1571.)
Probably the most famous alumnus from the first hundred years was John Harvard, after whom Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts was named. His father Robert and his brother Thomas were Governors of the school.
The great fire of Southwark destroyed the school building in 1676 and damaged part of St. Saviour’s church (although the church tower was unscathed). The school’s foundation stone was saved and a new building was built on the same site. There the school remained until 1839 when the Governors sold the building for £2,250 and relocated (along with the foundation stone) to a third building on Sumner Street to the west. Canon Edmund Boger was the last headmaster there from 1859 to 1895.
In 1896, St. Saviour’s Grammar School and St. Olave’s Grammar School were amalgamated at St. Olave’s site on Tooley Street and became known as St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s Grammar School. During World War II the old Sumner Street building was damaged by bombing. The foundation stone was subsequently moved to St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s Grammar School in 1952; when the school relocated to Orpington in Kent, the stone went with it in 1967.
From that point onward, the school was simply known as St. Olave’s Grammar School, thus ending the era of St. Saviour’s.
[edit] Distinguished Pupils
- John Harvard (1607-1638) – clergyman and scholar who bequeathed half his estate and his library for the foundation of the educational institution which became Harvard University in Massachusetts.
- William Heberden (1710-1801) – one of the most eminent English physicians of the eighteenth century, studied in Cambridge, personal physician to the Queen in the court of George III, attended to Samuel Johnson when Johnson suffered a stroke, author of Commentaries on the History and Cure of Diseases. In 1777 he donated £500 to St. Saviour’s Grammar School to augment the salary of the headmaster.
- William Van Mildert (1765-1836) – Bishop of Llandaff, founder of the University of Durham, last count palatine of Durham.
- George Tomlinson (1794-1853) – Bishop of Gibraltar from 1842-1863
- Sir Sidney Hedley Waterlow (1822-1906) – Lord Mayor of London, Member of Parliament
- Sir William Rose – Lord Mayor of London in 1862
- Sir William Atherton – Attorney General of England and Wales in 1861-1863
- Henry Hartley Fowler (1830-1911) – Member of Parliament, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for India, first Viscount Wolverhampton
[edit] References
- Carrington, R.C. Two Schools: A History of the St. Olave’s and St. Saviour’s Grammar School Foundation and its Schools. McCorquodale Printers Ltd., London, 1971.
- The Diocese of Southwark. “Southwark Cathedral: History.” April 28, 2004, (May 2, 2004).
- Sanda Lipton Antique Silver. Source of information on the school medal. "Sanda Lipton - Index of Badges, Prizes and Masonic Medals" May 12, 2006.
