A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



ULVERSTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL 



A grammar school on the Town Bank was 

 founded in 1736 by John Woodburn, who left 

 ^3 a year for the use of the schoolmaster, as 

 well as land with a rental of about £2°- ^^^ 

 school had an average attendance of 60 boys 

 and girls, some few boys learning classics. Sir John 

 Barrow, sometime Secretary to the Admiralty, 

 was educated here. In 1896, by a scheme under 

 the Endowed Schools Acts, the endowment, then 

 producing an income of £70, was applied for 

 the erection of the Victoria Higher Grade and 

 Technical School, opened in October, 1900, and 

 now styled ' The Victoria Secondary School and 

 Pupil Teacher Centre.' 



TUNSTALL SCHOOL 



Above the school door is the following inscrip- 

 tion in honour of the two founders : 



Johanni Farrer Gen° et Johanni Fenwick Armig" qui, 

 ut adolescentiae virtutis decus et literarum lumen 

 accederent, huic scholae benefecerunt, hoc saxum 

 honoris et gratitudinis ergo lubenter poni curavit 

 parochia de Tunstal, 1753. 



An old parish book dated 1751 contains an 

 account of moneys belonging to the school and 

 amounting to £6^ and a bequest of ;^200 for 

 the purchase of land. The school seems to have 

 been almost entirely conducted as an elementary 

 school. 



ROSSALL SCHOOL 



Of all the schools of Lancashire Rossall alone 

 lays claim to be one of the ' great Public 

 Schools ' in virtue of being a boarding school 

 open to all, but serving for the upper middle 

 classes. It has a most singular origin, for it was 

 founded, with the title of the Northern Church 

 of England School, on the initiative of a Roman 

 Catholic Corsican-French hotel-keeper. 



Rossall Hall was from the thirteenth century 

 a grange of Dieulacres Abbey. In 1838 it was 

 the mansion-house of Sir Peter Hesketh-Fleet- 

 wood, who had been tempted to embark and 

 had sunk his estate in laying out Fleetwood as a 

 port and watering place. A large hotel was 

 built, and one Vantini, a Corsican ex-courier, 

 was appointed manager. As an additional 

 attraction he proposed to establish a public 

 school for 500 boys on one side of the Wyre 

 and another for 500 girls on the other. At 

 a public meeting convened to inaugurate the 

 scheme, with Mr. St. Vincent Beechey, the in- 

 cumbent of the church, as chairman, the proposal 

 was restricted to a great North of England 

 Public School for Boys, and Sir Peter Hesketh- 

 Fleetwood headed the subscription list with 

 ;/^500. Rossall Hall was leased for twenty-one 

 years with the option of purchase for £j,ooo. 



6: 



The site consisted of 40 acres adjoining the sea 

 beach, and was then wholly in the country some 

 3 miles from Fleetwood. A council of fourteen 

 clergymen and ten laymen was got together, 

 and a limited company formed to provide capital. 

 On 22 August, 1844, a year later than Marl- 

 borough, the school was opened with 70 boys 

 under the head-mastership of the Rev. John Wool- 

 ley, D.C.L., fellowof University College, Oxford. 

 The beginnings were exceedingly rough. On 

 the first night there were not enough beds and 

 Dr. Woolley's family went without. The fees 

 were ^^30 a year for sons of clergymen nomi- 

 nated by governors, ^^40 a year for sons of laymen 

 or of unnominated clergymen. In spite of an 

 outbreak of scarlet fever in the latter half of the 

 year, the second year opened with 150 boys. 

 The poet Wordsworth attended the Speech Day 

 in 1846 and sent two grandsons to the school. 

 In 1847 some 200 boys received Queen Victoria 

 at Fleetwood with a Latin address written by 

 T. W. Sharpe, first captain of the school, who 

 became a scholar of Trinity, Cambridge, and 

 afterwards Chief Inspector of Elementary Schools 

 and last of the clerical inspectors. After this, 

 however, the numbers began to decline, Dr. 

 WooUey proving deficient in powers of disci- 

 pline over an unruly horde. He resigned in 1 849 

 to become head master of Norwich Grammar 

 School. Subsequently he went to Sydney, as 

 first principal of Sydney University, and was 

 drowned in the sinking of the London on his 

 way back to England in 1866. 



The Rev. William Alexander Osborne, 

 Craven Scholar and senior classic at Cambridge, 

 head master of Macclesfield Grammar School, 

 succeeded Dr. Woolley. He found 140 boys. 

 In a year the number had risen to 170. He 

 aimed at 300 boys. With this view the free- 

 hold of Rossall Hall was acquired from Sir 

 Peter Hesketh-Flectwood in 1852 and promptly 

 mortgaged for ^^ 10,000 to provide further build- 

 ings. Two leaving exhibitions were founded, 

 the Beechey Exhibition, named after Mr. St. 

 Vincent Beechey, who collected ^^ 1,000 for it, 

 and the Osborne Exhibition, the endowment of 

 which the head master got together ; while Mr. 

 George Swainson was the founder of six scholar- 

 ships of ;^20 each in the school. An archery 

 club, and in i860 a rifle corps, enrolled as the 

 65th Lancashire, were started. A swimming 

 bath was built also, the cross tides making the 

 open sea dangerous for bathing. The present cha- 

 pel, which cost £j,ooo, was erected the same year. 

 The school paper, the Rossallian, and the debat- 

 ing society date from 1867. Mr. Osborne's 

 success is said to have been largely due to his 

 tact and geniality, coupled with an extraordinary 

 power of perception of what was going on 

 around him, and a fine discrimination in the 

 choice of assistant masters. Conspicuous among 

 these was the Rev. Samuel John Phillips, for 



