EDUCATION IN NORWICH 105 
XI. 
EDUCATION IN NORWICH 
BY 
E. W. WOODHEAD, M.A., BarrisTER-AT-Law. 
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, NORWICH. 
Tue handing on of a tradition, together with an intelligent desire to 
improve upon it, is an important function of education. Wherever there 
exists a strong sense of citizenship and pride in the history of a city, there 
is certain to be real enthusiasm for education ; and Norwich possesses 
both the one and the other. From the time of the earliest ‘ Grammar ’ 
School, associated with the St. Giles or Great Hospital founded in 1256, 
there appears to have been not only the Claustral School for the boys of 
the wealthier classes, but also an Almoner’s School for the children in 
the neighbourhood of the cathedral ; and a School House in the monastery 
of the Black Friars in 1376, and a Choir School in the College of St. Mary 
were no doubt typical of the schools attached to the larger religious 
houses till the Reformation. Then was shown the city’s characteristic 
care for the provision of educational facilities, for when the Black Friars’ 
Convent building was granted by Henry VIII to the city, a grammar 
school was established in its infirmary ; and again, when in 1547 St. 
Giles Hospital was given to the city, the conveyance demanded the 
provision of ‘ one schoolmaster and one usher,’ though the school was 
actually established in 1549 in the Close, where it stands to this day. 
The same concern for education led the Mayor of the city, Thomas 
Anguish, in 1617 to endow hospital schools, whose good work is still 
perpetuated in the Anguish Home and the Anguish Trust; while 
successive benefactors from 1708 onwards bequeathed for the establish- 
ment of charity schools various sums which give aid to those proceeding 
to colleges and universities to-day. Only this year, the naming of a 
recently built school after the Norman School founded by John Norman 
in 1720 has served to remind the citizens of Norwich of her age-long 
devotion to the cause of education. 
Tradition, however, is fraught with danger unless it be accompanied by 
vision ; but the readiness to initiate and experiment which characterised 
the foundation in Norwich in 1608 of one of the earliest provincial 
libraries, has found issue in more recent years in the establishment of the 
East Anglian School for Blind and Deaf Children at Gorleston-on-Sea in 
co-operation with neighbouring authorities, in the provision of a large 
open-air school, of playing fields, and of meals, as soon as power was 
given to do so. Another proof that while respecting tradition she is not 
hidebound by it, is found in the experiments in a cheaper form of school 
