A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



parish and i ics. if not. The appointment of master and usher was 

 left to the Crown and the town council respectively, with provisions 

 enabling the Chancellor to remove the master on resolution of the trustees, 

 and the trustees to' dispense with the usher appointed by the corpora- 

 tion. One chief object of the scheme was the provision of new school 

 buildings, including a playground and a house for the headmaster, in 

 which he could take boarders. In 1855 the new buildings were opened 

 in Salisbury Road, about half a mile from the town, on a site of 4 acres 

 purchased by public subscription, increased by the purchase of an 

 additional acre in 1871. In 1856 the land by the old school, the 

 ' Litten ' and the ' Maiden Acre ' were sold to the Burial Board for 500, 

 and the double use of the land as burial-ground and playground (by no 

 means so uncommon as might be supposed) finally ceased after some three 

 hundred years. 



The first master under this new scheme was William Barlow 

 Lightfoot of Trinity College, Cambridge, the numbers of the school 

 fluctuating from ten to forty. The Schools Inquiry Commission in 

 I866 1 found twenty-six boys in the school, thirteen day boys and 

 thirteen boarders. For some years the headmaster received no income 

 from endowment, the whole going to pay off the debt on the school 

 premises. In 1866 he received 40 from endowment, 35 from capita- 

 tion fees and the profits on his modicum of boarders, who paid from 

 50 to 60 a year. In five years five boys had been sent to the 

 university. In 1870 Mr. Lightfoot retired to a vicarage in Lancashire. 

 After a two years' interval under Arthur Charles Wilson, B.D., student 

 of Christ Church, Oxford, Mr. Arthur Forster Rutty of Pembroke 

 College, Cambridge, was appointed 20 July, 1873. In 1874 and 1877 

 new schoolrooms were added ; the number of the scholars had quickly 

 increased until in 1878 there were fifty boys, of whom twenty-nine were 

 boarders. After ten years Mr. Rutty left Basingstoke for St. John's 

 School, Leatherhead, carrying off all or nearly all the boarders. The 

 present headmaster, the Reverend James Herbert Chadwick, M.A., 

 Exhibitioner of Hertford College, Oxford, was appointed 1 1 August, 

 1883. Amendments being needed, particularly in reference to the tuition 

 fees, a new scheme was prepared by the Charity Commissioners under the 

 Endowed Schools Acts, 1869-75. In 1884 there were fifty-three boys 

 in the school, of whom only six were boarders, so that for the first time, 

 probably, for 150 years the school was again efficiently doing its proper 

 work as a secondary school for Basingstoke and the neighbourhood. The 

 new scheme became law on its approval by the queen in council, 6 May, 

 1886. It created a new governing body the sixth or seventh the 

 school has had consisting of eleven members, four appointed by the 

 town council of Basingstoke, four by the municipal charity trustees, and 

 three co-opted by the rest. It fused into one fund all the endowments 

 of the school, abolished the patronage of the Crown and the municipal 



1 Setw>li Inquiry Cm. Rep. (1868), xi. 318. 

 384 



