SECOND OLDEST SCHOOL IN ENGLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 92, 9 July 1927, Page 6

SECOND OLDEST SCHOOL IN ENGLAND

IN EXISTENCE 1,300 YEARS The second oldest school in England celebrated its 1,300 th year of unbroken school life at the end of June. This is the School of St. Peter’s, York, which was founded in 627 by Paulinus. The school has had an unbroken succession of headmasters from 669 to the present day. Guy Fawkes was a scholar, and the land upon which the present school stands was bought from him. Four of the 13 Gunpowder Plot conspirators were educated here. There is a legend that Dick Turpin stole Black Bess from the headmaster after he had been flogged. The history of the school, written by Mr. Angelo Raine, tells of its establishment for the teaching of Latin to the Christian missionaries, and records how Wilfred 11., who later carried on the school, according to an old document, “moistened thirsty hearts with divers streams of teaching and varied dew of learning,” and poured into others “the streams of rhetoric.” Boys were boys even in those bygone days, and the young scholars were warned not to “gad about the muddy streets of the city.” A further aid to obedience was the St. William window in York Minister, which shows a schoolboy “caught by a pink devil with curly hair, a bushy tail, and dragon’s wings.”