Rugby School: recent history
I was very fortunate to be educated at Rugby, one of the leading public schools. Rugby was founded in 1567 by Lawrence Sheriff, a local grocer. However, it rose to fame under its great headmaster, Thomas Arnold, from 1828 to 41, who introduced most successfully the concept of the Christian gentleman. Unlike Eton, where aristocrats were called by their aristocratic name, pupils at Rugby were always called by their surnames. The sons of the rising merchant classes were very welcome, and turned into Christian gentlemen. Rugby produced a succession of poets notably his son Matthew Arnold, and also Arthur Clough who was a good boy and a mediocre poet, and Walter Landor who was a bad boy and a good poet. A later generation produced a fine poet in Rupert Brooke (If I should die, think only this of me. that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is, forever, England) and also the eccentric mathematician Lewis Carroll. There was also the novelist Thomas Hughes, who wrote Tom Brown’s Schooldays which established a wonderful myth of the school under Arnold. Later in the century, Rugby produced three archbishops of Canterbury in succession, Archibald Tate, Edward Benson and Frederick Temple, whose son William Temple also went on to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
And of course Rugby introduced its own particular kind of football, invented by William Webb Ellis in 1823, who according to the inscription first took the ball in his arms and ran . I suspect that the crucial characteristic came rather later, with the introduction of the offside rule where you cannot get ahead of the ball. You may kick the ball ahead, but you can only throw it backwards. This is the vital rule that turns a chaotic melée into some sort of game.
The status of Rugby as a public school was confirmed by the Clarendon commission which investigated the state of schools in 1868. Rugby was named as one of the seven public boarding schools – they were also two day schools included, St Paul’s and Merchant Taylors. It was not until the 20th century that Rugby produced its only Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, scion of a Birmingham screw manufacturer.
However, in the latter half of the 20th century, Rugby sadly declined in prestige. When I went up, we always thought it was one of the top four schools: Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby, but I fear that today it would barely scrape into the top hundred schools. What went wrong?
When I was there, the headmaster was Sir Arthur fforde, a distinguished solicitor – a controversial appointment as he had not hitherto been a teacher – he went on to become chairman of the BBC. I only came into his sphere once, and that was after I had left and I went to do my National Service and was called up to the Devonshire Regiment, which did not suit me at all. I was given a form to fill in to recommend me for officer training, which I was to send to the headmaster of my school. I was rather aware that I would not make an officer – I couldn’t march properly – so thinking that Sir Arthur did not really know me, I sent it to Peter Falk, my housemaster. However, I got a letter back promptly from Sir Arthur, saying that he quite agreed that I should go on the Russian course and had strongly recommended this. If you do not hear something very soon, he wrote, let me know. Well, sure enough, a couple of weeks later I was summoned to go to Bodmin for the Russian course. I don’t think anyone at the Devonshires knew how it had happened, but it was the only time in my life that I had pulled a string, and thank Heavens, it all worked well. Otherwise, what would have been a very miserable two years, turned out to be a quite valuable – I might even say enjoyable part of my life.
He was followed by Walter Hamilton (1957-66), a distinguished classicist who did several translations for Penguins and went on to become the head of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was described as “austere, distant, and ruthless” but I think he was generally reckoned to be a success. But I cannot help thinking that this is perhaps when the rot set in. The 1960s were a new age when old traditions were being challenged. and Hamilton by maintaining old-fashioned standards and installing old-fashioned and reactionary teachers began putting Rugby on the slippery slope.
After him, the governors wanted a change of style, so they appointed Jim Woodhouse (1967 – 1980). He was appointed at the age of 34, being the youngest headmaster since Thomas Arnold. He began by carrying out major reforms – he abolished corporal punishment and fagging, and introduced girls to the sixth form. However his style was perhaps overfamiliar: Headmasters need to have a little mystique and this he lacked. He had the fatal flaw of wanting to be liked by everybody and standards declined and the school began to get a bad reputation – there were problems with drugs. Eventually he went on to Lancing which would not normally be thought to be a promotion, but apparently he was a great success..
His successor was Brian Rees, whose career was a tragedy, and he only stayed for five years from 1980 to 1985 . Brian Rees had a glittering career — a double first in history at Cambridge and a great talent in music, both as a pianist and composer, composing a light opera with Julian Slade. He became a housemaster at Eton and married the headmaster’s daughter, then headmaster at Merchant Taylors and Charterhouse from which he was recruited to Rugby, so he served as headmaster of three of the nine Clarendon public schools. At first, all went well. When he arrived, discipline was slack and academic standards slipping. “It was, frankly, a fifth-rate school when I arrived, but by my third and final year I had got it up to being a third-rate school,” he said.
But then things began to go wrong. His wife Julia, with whom he had five children, died of cancer. A building project in France to build a holiday home went wrong and left him deeply in debt . He began drinking and he confided his problems to some friends, one of whom leaked the problems to the governing body. To make matters worse, he was bisexual and he had entertained an American friend at the school in the holidays for a couple of nights. His wife knew he was bi-sexual but took it in her stride, and there was not a whisper of any problems with the students. But the governing body held a kangaroo court and he was dismissed. Sir Patrick Dean, a controversial diplomat who was head of the governing body does not come out well in this episode. No other school would employ him because of the tinge of homosexuality, and he was reduced to washing dishes in a London hotel. Eventually he wrote several fine biographies but this episode marks the lowest point of Rugby’s decline
(It is clear that public schools generally were going through a difficult period at this time. There is an interesting parallel at Eton with the sacking of Anthony Chenevix Trench, who was notorious for caning his pupils at a time when caning was going out of fashion. He was appointed to carry out reforms, but he was a poor administrator and did not get on with the housemasters and was eventually sacked – though he went on to become a distinguished headmaster at Fettes.
Rugby missed out on the ideal successor to Brian Rees, who was Warwick Hele, who was the second master at the time. However he was snaffled up by St Paul’s, where he became a very successful High master and championed the Assisted Places Scheme: he was followed by the charismatic Peter Pilkington, who would have been Archbishop of Canterbury if only the Church of England was not irredeemably stupid – but in fact he ended up as Lord Pilkington. St Paul’s was on a roll)
Following Brian Rees, Rugby looked for a safe pair of hands and they found Richard Bull (1985-90). Richard Bull was a liberalising influence with an unwavering belief in coeducation. As a head master, with views shaped by his Quaker outlook, he struggled to gain support from a common room resistant to change. His difficulty was that, by the time he became headmaster of Rugby in 1985, headmasters were required to be salesmen. Bull was unable to communicate his wishes for change effectively with the senior masters, and numbers continued to fall. He came to Rugby having obtained a first in greats and then became a master at Eton, after which he became headmaster at Oakham School, where he successfully introduced girls. But his time at Rugby was less happy, and after five years, he left.
He was followed by Michael Mavor (1990 to 2001), who finally made the big change and introduced girls and made the school coeducational. Michael Mavor was a dynamic and energising headmaster who, throughout the course of a distinguished career, led three of Britain’s foremost schools – Gordonstoun, Rugby and Loretto.
In 1990, he moved south to take on a new challenge as headmaster of Rugby School. Here, amid an institution seemingly out of step with the modern world, his brief was simple: reverse the perceived decline in the school’s fortunes, raise academic standards and improve pupil numbers. In September 1993, Rugby became co-educational, and soon after my old house, Tudor, became a girls house.
However, in 1995, his unexpected promotion of sixth-former Louise Woolcock to be joint Head of School proved a step too far for many. That year, in addition to their banner-waving protests, the boys famously boycotted a chapel service to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mavor’s predecessor, Arnold. He was outwardly unperturbed and, undoubtedly aided by Woolcock’s deft handling of the media, Mavor’s strategy proved an immediate success, and applications from prospective parents increasing dramatically.
How far co-education was chosen on its merits and how far because pupil numbers were in decline is not clear, but it has been a big success.
Michael Mavor was followed by Patrick Derham as headmaster 2001 to 2014. Patrick Dereham read history at Pembroke College, Cambridge and then went on to Solihull before being appointed to Rugby. His main achievement was the establishment of the Arnold Foundation to provide scholarships for pupils who do not have the means to pay for the fees. Fundraising has been extremely successful and so far 156 Arnold foundationers have passed through the school, and 27 are currently in residence. Following his success at Rugby, Patrick Dereham went on to Westminster, where again he achieved great success.
The current headmaster is Peter Green, under whom Rugby has expanded considerably. Rugby has now acquired a prep school with the merger with Bilton Grange school. Bilton Grange is a well-known prep school at Dunchurch in the southern suburbs of Rogby, but in 2020 after considerable negotiations the two schools agreed to merge.
However, the major expansion has been the opening of an International School in Thailand in 2010. This is on a 75 acre site and has been a great success, and it now has over 500 pupils. A further international school is proposed in Japan. With all this expansion, the post of headmaster has been divided, and Peter Green is now the Executive Headmaster, and Gareth Parker Jones has been appointed as the Academic Headmaster to carry out the task of running the main school. Rugby is now an expanding enterprise and Thomas Arnold would be proud of the school as it is today.