SCHOOLS 



guineas for others, with accommodation for boarders. In ten years the 

 boarders had dwindled to 3, the day-boys had risen from 5 to 46. 



Meanwhile they spent jTi 5,000 on new buildings for a school which 

 they called ' the Oundle School,' chiefly for boarders, though also with 

 day-boys, the boarding fees being ^^^o ^ y^^f ^^^ the tuition fees for 

 day-boys £g gs. a year. This school, the real Laxton School, was 

 entrusted to a new head master, the Rev. H. St. John Read, a scholar 

 of University College and a former Captain of the Oxford Eleven. He 

 was previously a member of the original staff chosen to build up 

 Haileybury School. In 1877 this school numbered 97 ; in 1883 171, 

 of whom twenty were day boys. On Mr. Read's resignation a new 

 head master was appointed in 1883, the Rev. T. C. Fry, D.D., who 

 remained only a year, when the Rev. Mungo T. Park, scholar of 

 Lincoln College, Oxford, and head master of Louth Grammar School, 

 succeeded him. 



The great mistake of expending many thousands of pounds on 

 splendid buildings in the narrow street of a petty town, with little air 

 or space back or front, has now been to a large extent rectified by the 

 establishment of two boarding houses on the school cricket-field, a 

 fine piece of land thirty acres in extent, on an elevated plateau half a 

 mile outside the town. 



The school is now in a flourishing condition under Mr. Frederick 

 William Sanderson of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was eleventh 

 wrangler in 1882. As assistant master at Dulwich College he organized 

 the physical science and engineering side there. He was appointed 

 head master of Oundle School in 1892. 



There were then 92 boys ; in 1900 they had reached 168, 

 and numbers are well kept up. Of these seventeen are day boys, the 

 rest being boarders ; the total cost to whom is between £So and 

 ^90 a year. The boarders reside in six houses, the Head Master's or 

 School House in the town, Dryden House, Sidney House, Laxton 

 House (the name of which has been transferred from an old house in 

 the town near Jesus Church to a part of the boarding-house on the 

 cricket-field), in Grafton House, and in the Preparatory House. A 

 new house on the cricket-field was opened at Michaelmas, 1905. 

 The school has outgrown the parish church for its services, and so 

 for the present uses a temporary chapel, pending the erection of a 

 permanent one. 



Since 1892 physical, chemical, and engineering laboratories and 

 workshops have been added to the school buildings. Never was such a 

 many-sided school. There is a classical side, a modern side, a science 

 side, and an engineering side ; while there is also an army class and a 

 navy class, and a junior school, unspecialized, for small boys. The clas- 

 sical side still preponderates, numbering in 1901 52, as compared with 28 

 on the modern side, 8 on the science side, and 40 on the engineering side. 

 This last has in its strong, if recent, development annexed the greater 

 part of the old schoolhouse, with its laboratory. There were 6 boys 



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