A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



Schools Acts, was put forward by Canon Tinling and others, while the local 

 devotees of the Blue Coat School raised the cry of vested interests. So, 

 unfortunately, the opportunity for union was allowed to pass, and not only did 

 the Cathedral School and the Crypt School remain separate, but a third 

 school, evolved from the Blue Coat School, was instituted as a rival and under- 

 bidder to both. Mr. Fowler retired in 1872 to the vicarage of Barnwood. 

 He was found dead in his bath-room 7 August, 1877. 



The school had been falling in Fowler's later years, while the Crypt 

 School was growing. The dean and chapter, instigated chiefly by Canon 

 Tinling, were opposed to any fusion or, apparently, reform, and seem to have 

 been desirous to reduce the school simply to the position of a choristers' 

 school. Instead of augmenting the endowment of the school, removing it to 

 a more suitable site, or at least enlarging the buildings, they inflicted a crush- 

 ing blow on it by making the mastership an appendage to a minor canonry. 

 The fleeting succession of masters testifies to the fatal success of their plans, 

 as the place was simply used as a path to a better clerical living : March 

 1872, William Bedell Stanford, M.A., of Balliol College, Oxford ; July, 1875, 

 J. A. R. Washbourn, M.A., of Pembroke College; 1877, Philip William 

 Sparling, M.A., of Sidney-Sussex, Cambridge, perhaps the first Cambridge 

 head master; 1884, Washbourn again; April, 1886 (temporary), Ronald 

 Macdonald, M.A. 



In January, 1887, came Bernard Knollys Foster of Keble College, 

 Oxford. He removed the master's house to Pitt House, an old-fashioned, 

 rather rambling structure in Pitt Street, which runs north and south, 

 parallel with the west wall of the cathedral precinct. Behind it is a 

 pleasant lawn, with a field of about 5 acres, excellent for cricket and 

 football. The chapter acquired the freehold of it for the school in 

 1890. He managed to stay for eleven years. He had a small boarding 

 connexion, and the numbers under him rose to 63, but an outbreak of 

 small-pox ruined the boarding-house and brought the numbers down. 

 A. E. Fleming of Queen's College, Oxford, came in 1898 and combined 

 the precentorship with the mastership ; and retained the former on his 

 resignation of the latter. On 25 December, 1903, Oswald E. Hayden, 

 whose prowess as a cricketer is recorded in the History of Warwick School, 

 afterwards an exhibitioner of Christ Church, was appointed minor canon 

 and head master. In spite of the clerical duties which consume his Sundays, 

 he has devoted himself heartily to the school. He found 29 boys, of 

 whom 1 8 were choristers or probationary choristers, and has raised the 

 number to 52, of whom 5 are boarders, with two resident masters. Such 

 vigour has he succeeded in instilling into them that they were able to 

 play a drawn game with the Crypt School with its 150 boys at Associa- 

 tion football and to beat them at cricket. 



It is a strange thing that this school alone of the grammar schools of 

 the cathedrals of the new foundation has been left unschemed by the 

 Endowed Schools Commissioners and their successors, first the Charity Com- 

 missioners and now the Board of Education ; that no effort has been made to 

 obtain an adequate endowment for it under sec. 27 of the Endowed Schools 

 Act, 1869, from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as owners of the chapter 

 estates, though the claim is irrefutable ; or to make the school more public 



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