^ 1 



A HISTORY OF SURREY 



sequent additions increased the land to thirty- 

 one acres, and the buildings for 320 boys, cost- 

 ing ;C70,ooo. The chief increments were 

 a chapel in 1877, a new wing for seventy 

 boys in 1885, additional dormitories in 1889, 

 Block A for sixty boys in 1891, Block B for the 

 same number in 1894, and a new Dining Hall 

 in 1898. In 1883 Mr. Hawkins retired, having 

 raised the school from 50 boys to 130. 



Until then the school was purely a charity 

 school, to which sons of poor clergymen were 

 admitted on the nomination of donors and 

 subscribers wnthout competition, but subject 

 to the test of poverty by the Committee. 

 During the headmastership of the Rev. A. F. 

 Rutty, who came from Basingstoke Grammar 

 School, a ' Supplementary Foundation ' was 

 established in 1888, by which additional 

 sons of clergymen were admitted at thirty 

 guineas a year ; while paying boys at a 

 larger rate, sixty guineas for sons of laymen, 

 who must, however, be members of the 

 Church of England, and fifty guineas for 

 sons of clergymen, were added. Now there 

 are 170 boys free, eighty- three on the sup- 

 plementary foundation, and thirty-eight non- 

 foundationers. 



As the whole institution is maintained by 

 aubscription, and the school site and buildings 

 can at any moment be sold, while the Govern- 

 ing Body consists only of a self-elective com- 

 mittee of subscribers, it would appear doubtful 

 whether the school is anything but a private 

 school. The headmaster has, however, been 

 admitted a member of the Headmasters' 

 Conference. There are three unquestionable 

 endowonents : the Brooking Scholarship, a 

 leaving exhibition to the University of ^50 

 a year, confined to Foundationers who are 

 going to take orders ; the Soames Scholarship 

 of £25 a year open to all in the school ; and 

 a scholarship of £jo a year founded in 

 October 1904 by Lord Ashcombe. 



EPSOM COLLEGE 



Epsom College was in origin a somewhat 

 similar school to that of Leatherhead, but for 

 the sons of medical men, instead of clergy, 

 but has now a solid foundation and is of a 

 Public School character. A subscription was 

 started in 1851 by John Propert for a chari- 

 table institution for the medical profession, 

 consisting of an Asylum for duly qualified 

 medical men and their wddows, a school for 

 their sons, and annuities for those who were 

 impoverished. A sum of £27,000 having 

 been accumulated and a building erected 

 in i8ss, the 'Royal Medical Benevolent 

 College ' was mcorporated by Act of Parlia- 



222 



ment ; twenty pensioners were placed in it and 

 a school started under the headmastership of 

 the Rev. Dr. Robinson Thornton. There 

 were thirty-five Foundationers educated and 

 boarded free, and other paying scholars at £30, 

 raised within two or three years to £40 a year, 

 which by 1885 had been raised to fifty guineas. 

 In 1870 Epsom College very appropriately 

 took the lead among schools of its class 

 in adding a properly equipped laboratory to 

 its buildings. In 1871 Dr. Thornton passed 

 on to become Warden of Glenalmond College. 

 He was succeeded by the Rev. W. de Lancy 

 West, of St. John's College, Oxford, Head- 

 master of Brentwood School, Essex. He 

 retired in 1885, when the school consisted 

 of 212 boys, largely but by no means exclu- 

 sively sons of medical men. His successor, 

 the Rev. W. Cecil Wood, died after four 

 years, and in 1889 the Rev. T. N. H. Smith- 

 Pearse, of Marlborough, and then of Exeter 

 College, Oxford, and for ten years assistant 

 master at Marlborough College, became 

 Headmaster. 



In 1894, it being found that medical men 

 and their widows did not care to live in 

 the Asylum, another Act of Parliament was 

 passed under which out-pensioners were sub- 

 stituted at a larger rate of pay ; and their 

 quarters were handed over to the school. 



In 1903 the name of the school was changed 

 to Epsom College, to emphasize the fact that 

 it aimed at being not a class school for sons 

 of medical men, but a general Public School. 

 The College, built in 1855, occupies a 

 magnificent site on Epsom Downs of about 

 eighty acres, and splendid cricket and foot- 

 ball grounds, fives courts, swimming bath, 

 gymnasium and the rest. In the College 

 itself is room for 200 boys. In the head- 

 niaster's house, built in 1873 by the late 

 Sir Erasmus Wilson, there are thirty-two 

 boarders; to it are attached the day-boys; 

 while the Lower School, opened in 1897, for 

 boys under fifteen, has accommodation for 100. 

 There are fifty Foundationers, who are sons 

 of medical men, who are boarded and edu- 

 cated free on the election of the Governors ; 

 while there are ten Exhibitions of £^1 10s. a 

 year awarded by selected competition. Other 

 boys pay seventy-five guineas a year, and sons 

 of medical men sixty-five guineas. The day- 

 boys, about ten in number, pay twenty-five 

 guineas. The school now numbers 232 boys. 

 It 18 divided into Classical and Modern sides, 

 the latter being distinguished by the substi- 

 tution of German for Greek, and arranged to 

 prepare boys for special examinations. The 

 usual Public School institutions of Rifle Corps, 

 Surrey Regiment, 



attached to the 2nd East 



