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Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton area of Liverpool.
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Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton area of Liverpool.
Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton area of Liverpool.
The Collegiate is a striking, Grade II listed building, with a facade of pink Woolton sandstone, designed in Tudor Gothic style by the architect of the city's St. George's Hall, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes. The foundation stone was laid in 1840 and the Liverpool Collegiate Institution was opened by William Gladstone on 6 January 1843, originally as a fee-paying school for boys of middle-class parents and administered as three distinct organisations under a single headmaster. The Upper School became Liverpool College and relocated to Lodge Lane in 1884, whilst the Middle and Lower (or Commercial) Schools occupied the original site and would combine to form the Liverpool Collegiate School in 1908.
The Collegiate magazine, Esmeduna, which first appeared in 1896 and continued publication until 1978, was named after the ancient Liverpool manor mentioned in the Domesday Book, a name which had evolved into 'Smethesdune' by 1288 and survives to this day as Smithdown Road. Although aspects of Collegiate School life such as the annual Prize Giving, Founders Day Service, the school motto in Latin, and Esmeduna, along with the majestic Shaw Street building itself, stem from Victorian times, many enduring traditions originated after the Education Act 1902 gave new local education authorities powers to run secondary schools. The Collegiate was purchased by Liverpool Corporation in 1907 and was transformed into a single, integrated establishment entrusted to provide a high quality grammar school education.
The first headmaster of the new, LEA-controlled Liverpool Collegiate School was Samuel Edward Brown, appointed in 1908, a Cambridge graduate who set out to secure academic success at a time when the mark of a great school was the number of pupils winning university scholarships. The Collegiate also started to earn an enviable reputation within the city and beyond, and pupil numbers rose from around 400 in 1908 to over 1000 by the early 1920s. Fuelled by the desire to prove itself more than a poor relation of Liverpool College, the School succeeded in attracting "first class graduates, many from Oxbridge, to teach at the Collegiate, in a depressingly urban setting in what was then an unfashionable Northern city", inspirational teachers who helped "to transform the school in a generation into one of the leading grammar schools in the country".
Yearly dramatic or musical productions were instigated, including the school tradition of staging Gilbert & Sullivan operettas which endured for half a century. A new school organ was installed by Rushworth and Dreaper in 1913. Annual School Camps began in 1914, and from the 1920s Games lessons were conducted at Holly Lodge playing fields in West Derby.
In 1929, following the death of the first headmaster, the post was taken up by Arnold MacKenzie Gibson. He embarked on a broadening of the school curriculum and wished to place as much emphasis on the 'average boy' as the high-achieving university candidate. Gibson put in place alternative routes by which boys could make progress up the school and tried to ensure that all pupils received a well-rounded education, believing the education of the whole person, for leisure as much as work, to be as important as subject specialisation. From the early 1930s more school trips were arranged including a summer school at Dunkirk, regular exchanges with pupils in France and Germany and the continuation of the customary summer camp on the Isle of Man.
A new school song, 'Paean Esmedunensis', with music by Gibson and words in Latin by his deputy, Victor Dunstan, was first performed at the Annual Prize Giving of 1931 and would last the lifetime of the Collegiate.
Yearly school plays, school concerts and exhibitions of work continued throughout the 1930s, and the headmaster was able to report rising academic achievement at successive Prize Giving ceremonies. Gibson was also urging the building of a new Collegiate building in West Derby and in 1936 the Liverpool Education Committee recommended to the City Council the purchase of land in Meadow Lane. Proposals were set aside, however, as the international situation became increasingly tense during the late 1930s. School visits to Belgium and, perhaps surprisingly, to Germany continued.
Source: Liverpool Collegiate School (CC BY-SA)
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In July 1939, with war being anticipated, the Collegiate sent a circular to parents outlining plans for the entire school to evacuate the city and relocate to Bangor, North Wales. The plans included such details as the times of trains leaving Lime Street station on the evacuation days and the clothing to be included in boys' luggage. School was recalled on 21 August, the Declaration of War on Germany was announced on 3 September, and the evacuation of pupils began the same day.
An article about the evacuation from the December 1939 edition of Esmeduna, describes a remarkably orderly and enjoyable move, "Few will forget that memorable journey with its queer fusion of unreality and vividness. With the courage and happy thoughtlessness of youth, the atmosphere was rather one of a holiday picnic than a sad parting." The account details the warm welcome extended to pupils in Bangor, their dispersal to billets, the glorious weather and outdoor activities such as cycle rides, fishing and swimming. After three weeks organisation, with lorries and cars having transported vital equipment from Liverpool, lessons took place at the Friar's Junior School, the local Youth Hostel and the Twrgwyn Chapel.
The initial euphoria seems to have been short-lived. There were problems with billeting, and with parents inflicting themselves on harassed hosts during impromptu visits to their sons. After Christmas, the military inactivity of the Phoney War was encouraging many boys to return home to Liverpool. The Collegiate re-opened and two women teachers were appointed for the first time. Evacuee numbers becam
