Look it up
Hereford Cathedral School: A History over 800 Years
David Warnes reviews... Howard Tomlinson Logaston Press 2018 ISBN 978 1 910839 Knowing what matters
‘We got through by the skin of our teeth …’ said Kenneth Clark of the period misleadingly known as the Dark Ages, whiggishly assuming that history had a purpose which included him. Hereford Cathedral School undoubtedly got through by the skin of its teeth, surviving the English Reformation, the Civil War, a succession of conservative Deans, and the collapse of the west end of the cathedral which damaged one of its buildings. These and other vicissitudes are described and analysed in Howard Tomlinson’s excellent Hereford Cathedral School: A History over 800 Years. The best school histories satisfy a range of users. Devoted former pupils expect reminiscences of those who taught them, team photographs in which they themselves feature and extensive coverage of their epoch. Historians of education hope the level of detail and analysis will make the book a valuable secondary source. The wider scholarly community look for a narrative supported by a strong sense of context; and the general reader welcomes an accessible style and plenty of amusing anecdotes. Tomlinson’s book will please all of the above, steering as he does a deft course between what Robert Blake called ‘the parish pump and the broad delta’ of political, social and economic change. Hereford’s alumni are varied and interesting. Little is known about Thomas Traherne’s time there. Godfrey Winn, one of the few journalists to have served with distinction both as an agony aunt and a war correspondent, and Kingsley Martin, who later edited the New Statesman, claimed to have been unhappy, while Peter Richardson captained the 1st XI in 1948 and made a century for England at Old Trafford eight years later. The school is a mediaeval foundation and much older, as
Tomlinson shows, than its supposed origins in the 1380s. It flourished as a town grammar school under the auspices of the Chancellor of the cathedral, which was a secular rather than a monastic foundation. The English Reformation, which resulted in the closure of many schools, had at first little impact on Hereford. The cathedral clergy were slow to implement the Edwardian reforms and the first Elizabethan bishop, John Scory, described the majority of the canons as ‘dissemblers and rank papists’. Only in 1583 was a new set of Cathedral statutes published, which provided the school with its first endowment. The architect of this reform was John Whitgift, soon to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Bequests in the early 17th century strengthened the school’s position. Hereford was besieged and captured during the Civil War, but the school survived, albeit under different management, and the cathedral hierarchy was re-established in 1660. Five years later the Dean and Chapter issued new orders for the school’s governance. The schoolmaster and usher were charged to keep the pupils ‘from that most wicked vice of swearing, the epidemical sin of this city.’ Hereford was one of a number of foundations which benefited in the late 17th century from the generosity of the Duchess of Somerset. The early 18th century saw only three headmasters in the course of 64 years, but it was not until 1778 that the school had the use, albeit not exclusively, of a purposebuilt room which doubled as a concert venue. In 1794 the Dean and Chapter vetoed the holding of public entertainments there during Hereford races. ‘In a time of dissipation,’ they wrote, ‘some place of restraint for keeping the young gentlemen within bounds, secure from danger, is particularly necessary.’
Autumn 2018
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