SCHOOLS 



In 1827 the corporation claimed the school lands as their own. In 1837 the 

 Municipal Charity Trustees, who, under the Municipal Corporations Act, 

 1835, had been substituted as the Governing Body of the school for the cor- 

 poration, filed a Bill in Chancery on behalf of the school, and in January, 

 1842, its title to such of the lands given by the Thornes as still remained 

 was affirmed by the Court. The endowment left brought in about 1,000 a 

 year. The trustees then tried to get rid of Dr. Goodenough, whose usefulness 

 had long been over, and succeeded in September, 1844, after a litigation 

 which cost 3,220. 



A new scheme was made by the Court of Chancery in 1847 which 

 enabled tuition fees of 6 a year to be charged. Under Dr. Robert Evans 

 the school reopened 24 June, 1848, with 200 boys. He died in the cholera 

 epidemic of October, 1854. He was succeeded by the second master, C. T. 

 Hudson, who resigned on the refusal of the Master of the Rolls in 1860 to 

 allow boarders. This, and the inertia of the trustees in not moving the 

 school to a new site where proper playgrounds and school-buildings could be 

 provided, resulted in the foundation of Clifton College, and the supersession 

 by it of this ancient grammar school as the chief school of the town. Some 

 improvement was effected by an Act of 1859, 21 & 22 Vic. cap. 30, con- 

 firming a scheme of the Charity Commissioners under the Charitable Trusts 

 Acts, by which the old exhibition endowments were consolidated and aug- 

 mented by the unused accumulations, about 2,000, of Dr. Thomas White's 

 charity for roads. 



In 1866 the Schools Inquiry Commission found a school of 235 boys 

 under the Rev. J. W. Caldicott. The masters were ill-paid. Very few boys 

 went from the school to the universities. 



The situation is gloomy There is a long schoolroom .... 5 class-rooms, though 



one should more properly form the head-master's study. The other masters .... have no 



private room whatever in which they can stay between school hours The .school 



buildings generally are not worthy of the city They compare very unfavourably 



with those of Queen Elizabeth's Hospital or Clifton College. 



After the passing of the Endowed Schools Act, 1869, a new scheme or 

 rather schemes were published by the Endowed Schools Commissioners. 

 They met with much opposition, but finally in their main features became 

 law on the approval of Queen Victoria in Council I3th May, 1875. 



The main scheme added to the Municipal Charity Trustees six governors, 

 two representatives of the Town Council, two of the School Board, one of the 

 Grammar School Masters, and one of the masters and mistresses of the various 

 schools placed under them. The tuition fees were raised from 8 to 12 a 

 year, and four leaving exhibitions of 50 a year were provided. By three 

 subsidiary schemes for the Loan Money, the Prisoners Redemption Charities, 

 and Mary Ann Peloquin's doles, all of which, being out of date, were of little 

 use, and had large accumulations of income, sums of 4,250, 355 io/., and 

 5,000 were applied to the school in order to provide the much-needed new 

 buildings, which were to be for 400 boys. On 15 February, 1879, the 

 school moved into these buildings, erected in Tyndall's Park, just off the top 

 of Park Road, the main street leading from Bristol to Clifton. They are in 

 the late Perpendicular and Tudor styles, and form an imposing pile, the more 

 striking from the use of the reddish-purple stone of the district, set off by 

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