

SCHOOLS 



6 guineas to 14 a year. The following scholarships have been founded since the scheme, so true 

 is it that instead of reforms, as is sometimes alleged, drying up benefactions, by promoting efficiency 

 they attract gifts the Pease Memorial, 1879; the William Barningham, 1879; the Chapman 

 Ward memorial, 1881 ; the George Stephenson memorial, 1883 ; the Thomas Richardson, 1884. 

 The school is more flourishing than it has ever been ; but with increasing demands on them modern 

 schools need more money, and with a large proportion of the boys, 36, holding scholarships, 

 the endowment alone, now 175 a year, is insufficient as always. 



HOUGHTON SCHOOL 



This school was for a long time the premier school of the county in point of status. It owes its 

 foundation to the public spirit of the most famous of the rectors of Houghton le Spring. In the 

 reigns of Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, the rectory was held by Bernard Gilpin, 

 a nephew of Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of Durham, for which he resigned the nominally more 

 exalted, but in those times more dangerous, post of archdeacon and canon of Durham. In later times 

 he refused the headship of a college at Cambridge and a bishopric at Carlisle, in order to continue his 

 self-appointed work, which earned for him the title of Apostle of the North, of preaching tours in 

 these days they might perhaps be called ' revival meetings ' among the rough mountaineers of 

 Tynedale and Redesdale in Northumberland. 



At Houghton itself he seems to have considered that he most effectively advanced religion by 

 setting up a school. In his will he threatened ' God's plagues upon all such as seek to withdraw 

 any livings given to the maintenance of his holy gospel, and I trust I may bouldly affirme that 

 whatsoever is geaven to a godlie grammar schole is geaven to the maintenaunce of Christ's holy 

 gospel.' He started therefore a school, taking boarders into his own rectory-house, an embattled and 

 fortified tower, about 1560. As early as 1569 he was trying to procure endowment for it and to 

 obtain a royal charter. 1 A letter to him from Francis Russell, the first earl of Bedford, 3 May, 1570,* 

 informs Gilpin that he had received his letter of 1 1 April, but that ' concerning your suit moved at 

 Windsor the troubles that have since happened have been so many and great that no convenient 

 time hath served to prosecute the same, and the bill given in, I doubt, is lost ; so that for more surety 

 it were good you sent up another copy and I will do my best endeavours to bring it to pass.' The 

 troubles were the Northern Rebellion of 1569, when Gilpin's own house was plundered by the rebels. 

 A year later, 26 March, 1571, the earl wrote : 'I have moved the queen's majesty for your 

 school, and afterwards the bill was delivered to Mr. Secretary Walsingham, a very good and godly 

 gentleman, who procured the same to be signed as I think you have before this heard by your 

 brother. Assuredly you did very well and honestly therein and have deserved great commendations. 

 A thing most necessary in those parts is this of all other for the well bringing-up of youth and 

 training them in learning and goodness.' It was not, however, until 2 April, 1574, that the letters 

 patent were sealed. On the petition of John Heath of Kepier, and Bernard Gylpyne, rector of 

 Houghton le Spring, the queen established in honour of the Trinity ' a free grammar school and 

 almshouse of Kepier in the parish of Houghton in le Sprynge,' to consist of a master and usher to be 

 appointed and removed at pleasure by the governing body. The governing body was peculiar. 

 Heath and Gilpin were appointed and incorporated as the first governors for life. Heath and his heirs 

 were to appoint one governor to succeed Heath, and Gilpin and his successors as rectors were to 

 appoint another governor to succeed him. Licence in mortmain was given up to 50 a year. 



The school was called the Kepier School because the principal endowment was given by John 

 Heath, who had bought from the crown the endowments of the dissolved Kepier Hospital, the 

 St. Giles' Leper Hospital outside Durham on the road to Houghton. The endowments given are set out 

 in Gilpin's will of 17 October, 1582, viz. : For the schoolmaster (given by Heath), the Gelie 

 Teinde of Bishopwearmouth, i.e. the Gilly tithes, or tithes payable to the Kepier or Gilly of 

 St. Giles Hospital, the road to which is still called Gillygate, 3 8 ; pensions out of the parsonages of 

 Ryton, Whickham, and Gateshead, 5 6s. 8<t. ; total, 13 6s. 8</. For the usher (bought by 

 Gilpin from Heath for 240), from the ' Gellie Teinde ' of Easington, Chester le Street, Whitburn, 

 Cleadon, and Ryhope, 8 ; for 3 poor scholars from the same tithes (i 131. 4^. each), 5 ; 

 total, 13. A pension out of Cocker (given by Mr. William Carr), 5 marks, of which 40*. to the 

 poor, 3 6s. %d. ; a pension out of the town chamber of Newcastle (given by Mr. Franklin, 

 Gilpin's predecessor in the rectory, or a member of his family), 1 6s. 8</. ; a pension out of 

 Pensher and Pclowe, 2 6s. 8d. ; total, 7. 



1 M. Lewins, Life of Bernard Gi/fit, p. 467. ' Rev. C. S. Collingwood, Memoirs of Bernard Gilpin, 

 * The hospital which was conferred on St. Peter's School, York, in the reign of Philip and Mary was 

 also situate in Gillygate, the street leading to St. Giles' Hospital there. St. Giles was the patron saint of lepers, 

 and the leper hospitals dedicated to him were generally placed, as in St. Giles at Oxford, some half-mile or 

 more outside the gates of the town on a main road. 



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