St Albans School, Hertfordshire

The Abbey Gateway, now home to the school's History and Religious Studies departments.

The school was founded within St Albans Abbey by Abbot Wulsin in 948 and was the first school in the world to accept students not intending to join a religious order, being the first school open to the wider public.[3] By the 12th century, the School had built for itself such a reputation that the famous Norman scholars Geoffrey de Gorham and Alexander Neckam applied for the post of Master.[3] Geoffrey de Gorham was later to become Abbot of St Albans in 1119, and the School then remained under the control of the Abbot until the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539.[4]

By the 12th century, the school was one of the largest in the British Isles. On 16 September 1309, the school was given new statutes, including scholarships for poor students.[5] The school and Abbey were sacked in 1381 during the Peasants' Revolt. (The revolt's leader John Ball, was also a former pupil of the school.) By the 15th century, the school was located in buildings in Romeland and inside the Abbey Gateway, which from 1479 housed schoolmaster's press.[6] The St Albans Press continues today, in a semi-dormant form, as "John Insomuch Schoolmaster Printer 1479 Ltd", making the school the oldest extant presses in the world.[7]

After the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539, Richard Boreman, the last Abbot, became Headmaster and the school moved to a chapel near St Peter's church in St Albans after its buildings in Romeland were demolished by Sir Richard Lee for building materials to rebuild Sopwell Priory into a country house.[8] In 1549, to put the school on a firmer foundation, the last Abbot was granted the right to maintain a Grammar School by a private Act of Parliament.[8] Around 1545, the school outgrew its St Peter's church premises and moved again to the Lady Chapel at the east end of the Abbey, bought for the huge sum of £100, and it was separated from the rest of the abbey with a wall made of smashed stones from the ancient shrine of St Alban.[8] In 1553 the Crown sold the rest of the Abbey Church to the town for £400 (the value of the lead on its roof) and became a Church of England parish church for the new Borough of St Albans.[8]

In 1570 Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and father of Sir Francis Bacon, then living at nearby Gorhambury, gave the school new statutes and re-endowed the School by successful petitioning Queen Elizabeth I for a Wine Charter (extended by King James I in 1606).[3] The only other educational institutions with the same privileges to tax the alcohol trade in their localities were the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. The income from wine and beer sales in the St Albans continued to fund the school until 1922, when they were surrendered to the Treasury in return for £1200 in The Oxford and St Albans Wine Privileges (Abolition) Bill.[9] Other benefactors from this period include Sir Richard Platt, Citizen of London, sometime Master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers and later founder of Aldenham School, who 'conveyed to the Mayor and Burgesses, and their Successors for ever' former-Abbey land on George Street in St Albans for the benefit of the school, and Charles Hale, whose relative Richard Hale later founded a grammar school in the town of Hertford.[10]

Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Nicholas Bacon also founded the school's library in 1570, which moved from Sumpter Yard in the 19th century to the Abbey Gateway, and then in the 1980s to an impressive converted 19th century neo-Gothic hall, opened by Professor Colin Renfrew OA, then Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. The library collection now holds over 16,000 volumes and Elizabeth I is still regarded as the 'Benefactor Royal' of the St Albans School Library.[11]

Other significant benefactions to the school include a gift of clay pits near St Albans made in 1582[10] and a significant amount of land by Charles Woollam, an Old Albanian, in the 19th century, including playing fields at Belmont Hill and St Alban's "Holy Well", which was a site for medieval pilgrimage.[12]

In 1626, King Charles I visited the school in a royal inspection. His visit to St Albans was recorded by a royal crest being built into one of the fireplace surrounds in the Abbey Gateway and this room is still called the "King Charles Room" in honour of his visit.[13]

After over three centuries in the Lady Chapel, in 1871, due to the restoration of the Abbey and the re-instatement of the Lady Chapel, the school moved into the Abbey Gateway (which had been built in 1365 and, following the dissolution, had been used as a prison for 300 years; now a scheduled ancient monument).[14]

Between 1907 and 1976, it was a Direct Grant grammar school, keeping the name St Albans School for most part not least because of the existence of 2 separate Boys' and Girls' Grammar Schools in St Albans and was generally referred to simply as a Direct Grant School. In the 1960s and 1970s many of the pupils at the school enjoyed a free education, paid for by public funds. From 1980 to 2005, it also offered free places to poor but academically talented pupils under the Assisted Places Scheme. Since the 1970s, the school has also offered a large number of scholarships and bursaries up to 100% of the school's fees, funded from its endowments.

Since the 19th century, there have been many additions to the school site, which now comprises a very interesting architectural mixture of buildings dating from the Roman-era cellar, where the archives are kept under the Abbey Gateway, to modern extensions built in the 1990s.[15] The school also includes the oldest room in the world regularly used as a classroom, the 12th century West Gate Room, which was incorporated from a previous gateway into the current Abbey Gateway in the 1360s.[15] Ptolemy Dean is the current school architect.[16]

The Woollam Playing Fields, a couple of miles away to the north of the city, provides an extensive, modern, outdoor sports facility for the School and the Old Albanian Sports Club.[17] At over 100 acres, it was the largest sporting development in Western Europe until the construction of the Olympic Park in East London for the 2012 games. The site was officially opened in October 2002 by Prince Richard, The Duke of Gloucester. Woollam's was built on part of a 400-acre farm owned by the school, which also contains a field studies centre used by the school's biology department. In 2003, the school opened a new Drama Department building and theatre in Romeland, on the site of the medieval school's building, called the "New Place".

On 7 January 2010, the Herts Advertiser ran an article reporting that a loan of £1000 at the rate of 6% p.a. was given by the school to the city of St Albans in 1722. The St Albans City and District Council, though it acknowledges the loan, has not made any repayments on it. As of 2012, the debt stands at £21,800,000,000 (21 billion 800 million pounds).

The summer of 2012 saw the completion of a new Sports Centre on site, with sports hall, swimming pool, climbing wall, fitness suite and dance studio. Another recent development was the acquisition of Aquis Court, an office building adjacent to the school, which provides facilities for the Sixth Form, with a new Common Room, cafeteria and classrooms, while the Art Department also has new facilities.[18]

The school also has a long scientific tradition, stretching back to the Norman era, when Alexander Neckam became master of the school. Since the advent of modern science, the school has produced many famous scientists and mathematicians including Professor Colin Cherry, Professor Ian Grant, Professor Stephen Hawking (inspired by Dikran Tahta, a teacher at the school who later worked at the Open University), and Professor Christopher Budd. In the light of its long scientific heritage, the school was awarded a large sum of money in 2007 by the Wolfson Foundation to rebuild its physics laboratories to university standards.[20]

St Albans School has also produced some notable historians and historiographers. In medieval times, the school and one of its alumni, Matthew Paris, were closely associated with the St Albans school of medieval historiography, and developed one of the first consistent methods of historical writing.[21] More recently; two teachers in the award-winning Ancient History department published a book on Roman sources in 2010.[7] Some notable historians who are alumni of the school include Colin Renfrew, an archaeological historian and former Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, Ernest Gellner, an anthropological historian, Professor Malcolm Schofield of St John's College, Cambridge, and more recently Justin Pollard, a TV historian, and Peter Sarris, a specialist on the Byzantine Empire and a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

• Cardinal Boso (d. c. 1181), third English Cardinal
• Nicholas Breakspear (c. 1100–1159), who became Pope Adrian IV (1154–1159), the only English Pope.
• Alexander Neckam (1157–1217), scientist and teacher

• Matthew Paris, monk and historian

• John Ball, Christian radical political thinker and leader of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
• William Grindcobbe, a leader in St Albans of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381
• Richard of Wallingford (1292–1336) English mathematician who made major contributions to astronomy/astrology and horology
• Richard of Wallingford (late 14th century) a leader in St Albans of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381

• John Whethamstede (or Bostock) (c. 1392–1465), scholar, writer and Abbot of St Albans Abbey

• Walter Curle (1575–1647), Bishop of Winchester
• Robert Wright (1560–1643), first Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and Bishop of Lichfield & Coventry

• Henry Blount (1602–1682), traveller and writer
• William Cowper, 1st Earl Cowper (c. 1665–1723), Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, grandfather of William Cowper, poet and hymnodist
• William Dobson (1611–1646), painter to King Charles I
• Major-General John Hill (?c. 1680–1735), M.P., army officer, politician and courtier
• Francis Pemberton (1624–1697), Lord Chief Justice

• William Domville, Bt (1742–1833), Lord Mayor of London 1813
• Thomas Walsh (1776–1849), Roman Catholic Bishop and Vicar Apostolic, Midlands and London Districts

• Colonel Sir Hildred Carlile, 1st Bt, M.P. (1852–1942), army officer, politician and philanthropist
• Alfred Faulkner (1882–1963), civil servant – Permanent Under-Secretary for Mines
• Henry Montague Grover (1791–1866), writer and theologian
• Coulson Kernahan (1858–1943), essayist, novelist and editor
• Frank Toovey Lake (1849–1868) Naval Officer who was part of Richard Henry Brunton's team who surveyed lighthouse sites around Japan
• Max Pemberton (1863–1950), novelist and editor
• Aubrey George Spencer (1795–1872), first Anglican Bishop of Newfoundland
• Thomas Spencer Wells (1818–1897), surgeon
• William Whitaker, F.R.S. (1836–1925), geologist
• Charles Williams (1886–1945), poet, novelist, publisher and theological writer

• Rod Argent (b. 1945), musician, founder member of The Zombies
• Keith M. Ashman (b. 1963), theoretical physicist and globular clusters expert
• Paul Atkinson (1946–2004), musician, founder member of The Zombies
• Ian Bell (b. 1962), co-author of Elite
• Christopher Budd OBE (b. 1960), mathematician
• Johnson Cann (b. 1937), geologist
• Colin Cherry (1914–1975), cognitive scientist
• Ralph Chubb (1892–1960), poet, printer and artist
• Sally Connolly (b. 1976), literary critic, author, and academic
• Charles "Nick" Corfield (b. 1959), mathematician, computer programmer, and founder of several startup companies in Silicon Valley
• Rogers Covey-Crump (b. 1944), singer (tenor), member of The Hilliard Ensemble
• Charles Crawford (b. 1954) British diplomat and speechwriter
• Graham Dow (b. 1942), Bishop of Carlisle
• Bruce Duncan (b. 1938), Anglican priest
• Chris Duffield (b. 1952), Town Clerk and Chief Executive of the Corporation of the City of London since 2003[23]
• Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian
• Brigadier Ted Flint (b. 1960), former Signal Officer in Chief of the British Army
• Ernest Gellner (1925–1995), philosopher and social anthropologist
• Dave Gibbons (b. 1949), Kirby Award winning comic book artist and co-creator of Watchmen
• Jack Goody, FBA (1919–2015), social anthropologist[24]
• Andrew Grant (b. 1968), novelist[25][26]
• Ian Grant (b. 1930), mathematical physicist
• John Grimaldi (b. 1955), musician, songwriter, member of Argent
• David Grossman, political correspondent for Newsnight
• Hugh Grundy (b. 1945), musician, founder member of The Zombies
• Patrick Burnet Harris (b. 1934), former Bishop of Southwell
• Tim Hart (1948–2009), musician, founder member of electric folk band Steeleye Span
• Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), cosmologist and theoretical physicist
• Tony Hendra (b. 1941), satirist and writer
• General Sir Richard Lawson (b. 1927), Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces Northern Europe 1982–96
• Yann Lovelock (b.1939), writer and interfaith worker
• Gregory Paul Martin (b. 1957), actor and writer[27]
• Herbert Mundin (1898–1939), Hollywood character actor
• Ed Macfarlane, member of the St Albans-based Indie band Friendly Fires
• Christopher Morris (b. 1938), TV news presenter, journalist and author
• Mike Newell (b. 1942), film director
• Professor Ray Pahl (1935–2011), sociologist
• Tony Penikett (b. 1945), writer and Canadian politician
• Charles Pereira FRS (1913–2004), tropical agriculturist and hydrologist
• Justin Pollard (b. 1968), writer and historian
• Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn (b. 1937), archaeologist
• Tim Rice (b. 1944), lyricist
• Joss Sheldon (b. 1982), author
• Harry Solomon (b. 1937), businessman
• Arthur Swinson (c. 1915–70), army officer, writer, playwright and historian
• Nicholas Tarling (1931–2017), historian
• Richard Yeoman-Clark (1944-2019), BBC Radiophonics Engineer
• Kane Vincent-Young (b. 1996), association footballer
• Tolaji Bola (b. 1999), association footballer
• Charlie Scott (b. 1999), cricketer