A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



The first class on the classical side contained two 

 boys between 15 and 16, who did very fair Latin 

 verses and construed and parsed Xenophon and 

 Cicero well. The rest were considerably below 

 them. The second class was in Caesar. Of 

 the Latin of the third class it was said : ' All of 

 them . . . but a few boys of 10 would be called 

 decidedly backward for their age.' The English 

 school was taught by two certificated, i.e. ele- 

 mentary, teachers. The boys in the first class 

 knew practically no French. 'Their English 

 was very fair. . . . They (i.e. the whole school) 

 worked arithmetic neatly . . . but were not very 

 advanced.' The Rev. Frederick Teeling Cusins 69 

 was then master. Though described as ' tem- 

 porary,' he had been master for seven years. 

 Educated at Sheffield Grammar School and 

 King's College School, London, he went to 

 St. John's, Cambridge, where he became a 

 senior optime in 1849. He came to Notting- 

 ham as second master in 1854, and became 

 head master in 1861. He was the only graduate 

 on the staff. Cusins retired to the living of 

 Hykcham in 1868, and died in 1900. A tablet 

 to his memory was erected in the school in 

 1901. 



The reason why Mr. Cusins was called 

 temporary master was that under powers con- 

 tained in a private Act of Parliament in 1860 

 the school was in course of re-construction and 

 removal. In 1862 a site for a new building was 

 purchased in the centre of the ridge on the north 

 side of the town. The ground formed part of 

 extensive Lammas Lands, which had then been 

 recently inclosed, and out of which the general 

 cemetery, the arboretum, the church cemetery, 

 and the Forest recreation ground, were secured as 

 open spaces. The building on the new site was 

 erected from the designs of Mr. E. Patchitt, a 

 solicitor and clerk to the trustees, who is believed 

 to have had the occasional assistance of a pro- 

 fessional architect. One of Mr. Patchitt's 

 ambitions was to build an imitation of the up- 

 turned boat which is described in David Copper- 

 field as the abode of Mr. Peggotty, and a huge 

 room of this shape accordingly forms part of the 

 present school. The rest of the plan comprised 

 three more very large rooms and a number of 

 very small ones, all alike unsuited in the opinion 

 of subsequent head masters to the purpose for 

 which they were intended. Moreover, though 

 a large site was secured, the buildings, in spite of 

 many remonstrances, were placed in the middle 

 of it, and what might have been a handsome 

 playground was frittered away into two small 

 areas. As the building, which resembled three 

 small churches connected by the up-turned boat 

 above-described, did not contain floor space enough 

 for the boys who subsequently came to the school, 

 a passage was excavated beneath it in the solid 

 rock and in this more rooms were built, but the 



main building was left, supported at every corner 

 by a shapeless pillar of rock. It was not till 

 1885 that the present buildings were completed, 

 the lawns laid out, and the school made present- 

 able. 



It is interesting as showing how little any of 

 us can see ahead that the site was said in 1867 

 to be ' between the Arboretum and the race- 

 course, so that however much the town extends 

 it is not likely to be enclosed by buildings. There 

 is land enough for a large playground.' The 

 school is now surrounded on every side by build- 

 ings, except on that of the Arboretum, which 

 has fortunately been converted into a public park 

 ' for ever to endure.' The playground has long 

 proved insufficient. The Act gave the school 

 the name of High School, a very ancient title 

 for the great or chief school of a town, in use 

 at Winchester before Wykeham's foundation and 

 at Lincoln in the I4th century, but now chiefly 

 confined to girls' schools. 



Among the competitors for the head-master- 

 ship in the new buildings was the late Walter 

 Besant, the novelist. Robert Dixon, the selected 

 candidate, born at Marlborough in 1835, had 

 been at Marlborough Grammar School, whence 

 he had gained a Somerset Exhibition at St. John's 

 College, Cambridge. He was fifth senior optime 

 and third in the second class of the classical 

 tripos in 1857. He was, when elected, second 

 master of Hereford Cathedral Grammar School, 

 and an M. A. of Cambridge. While at Notting- 

 ham he took the degree of LL.M. in 1872 and 

 of LL.D. in 1878. Mr. Dixon was a big 

 man, with a powerful brow and a long brown 

 beard, which gave him an Olympian aspect. 

 He was equally keen as a geologist and as a 

 student of Horace. His old pupils' account of 

 him when he died 8 February 1893' shows 

 that he impressed the boys alike with the variety 

 of his knowledge and the force of his character. 

 On 1 6 April 1868 the new High School was 

 opened with 80 boys; by Midsummer 1869 the 

 numbers had risen to 281, and ten years later to 



395- 



In the new buildings, however, the school was 

 organized, as of old, into an upper and a lower 

 school, the fee for the former being ^8 a year, 

 and for the latter ^4. But as the payments of 

 fees was a novelty it was very unwelcome to the 

 old inhabitants of the town. The upper school 

 seldom exceeded 100 boys, but the lower school 

 sometimes had as many as 250. Both schools 

 were understaffed. Yet the quality of the output 

 improved as well as the quantity. An exhibition at 

 Balliol in 1871 was followed by a junior student- 

 ship at Christ Church in 1873, and other scholar- 

 ships and exhibitions at both universities. 



It is a remarkable proof of how reform of 

 charities, so far from killing charity, as is often 

 alleged by those who oppose reforms, begets 



The Forester, July 1902. 



236 



70 The forester, April 1893. 



