4096 x 6144 px | 34,7 x 52 cm | 13,7 x 20,5 inches | 300dpi
Ubicazione:
Repton, Derbyshire, England
Altre informazioni:
Sir John Port of Etwall died on 6 June 1557 without a male heir and his bequests included not only funds to provide almshouses at Etwall but also the means to found a "Grammar School in Etwalle or Reptone", where the scholars every day were to pray for the souls of his parents and other relatives. In 1559 the executors of Sir John Port's will purchased from the Thacker family, for £37.10s (£37.50), the land which had once housed a twelfth-century Augustinian Priory, and the accompanying buildings which had survived Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries and subsequent upheavals, namely, the Guest Chamber and Prior's Lodging (which as the Old Priory currently houses the School Library and Common Room), Overton's Tower (now part of School House), the Tithe Barn, and the Arch, which is all that now remains of the priory's original gatehouse and which helped inspire the School's motto: porta vacat culpa. The School gradually grew in numbers and success, combining local scholars, whose schooling was paid by the Endowment, and the sons of fee-paying parents from further afield. However, the history of the school was not one of uninterrupted progress and at one time during the headmastership of William Bagshaw Stevens the school roll seemingly dropped to a single boy! The School's fortunes had been significantly restored under the Headmasterships of Sleath, Macaulay and Peile but it was Steuart Adolphus Pears who, as Headmaster between 1854 and 1874, did more than anyone else since Sir John Port to create the conditions conducive to Repton's success, and for that reason has become honoured as the school's "Second Founder". In the autumn of 1854 when Pears arrived as Head Master of Repton, with a salary of £360 pa, he found a handful of staff, and just 48 boys in the school. By the Tercentenary of the School's foundation in 1857 numbers had more than doubled, more staff had been taken on and Pears had begun the process of investing in various improvements
