Letter to the Editor – Roger Garratt – Mar ’25

15th March 2025 | Letters

Dear Editor

Turbulence over the centuries at KBGS

In the encouragingly full letters page of the last issue, I read concerning the Grammar School Hall of “a brief period of turbulence”, “resignations of some trustees’ with immediate effect”, “re-engagement of some former trustees” and “fundamental differences in vision.”

In its many centuries the Grammar School (KBGS) has witnessed several, not always brief, periods of turbulence, resignations, (of feoffees, tenants, trustees, governors, schoolmasters, headmasters), and fundamental differences in vision, which might be of interest to readers.

14th/17th Century – Land Owners & Tenants

Charter agreements, possibly dated 1359, were later relevant for tenants of school land maintaining they were paying rent of land which they, (the tenants), actually owned, but the school challenged. Far from being brief, this was not decided until 1650 before three commissioners appointed by Chancery, and witnesses had to go outside the parish, to The Crown Inn at Great Glen, to give evidence.

1624 – New School and Kilpeck Close Residents

A difference of vision arose in 1624 when a new school building was ordered by commissioners, to be built in Kilpeck’s Close, (near to the present Kibworth Methodist Church), but this was unpopular as, being built within the yard of John Abbot it involved some pupils walking through private property to their classes. Thus the property owners protested. In response, in a bill of complaint, the feoffees ( school trustees) noted  “…and John Abbot, being a very contentious and malicious person, he, his wife and children have used very often to annoy the School by laying of dunghills near the School, by throwing cow dung upon some of the feoffees and upon the doors and windows of the Schoolhouse and upon the Schoolmaster and scholars there..(which, save one occasion, Mr. Abbot denied!).

1725 – Anglicans and Dissenters

Further differences of vision occurred around the same time as new building work was in hand at the school. Certain feoffees (dissenters) held a different vision to other feoffees – (the establishment church group). But the buildings are still with us today, the Schoolhouse and Headmaster’s House (Happy 300th birthday) tastefully adapted as apartments on School Road. 

Early 1900s – The First Lay Headmaster and The Governors

Having been a house master at Bedford, a public school with over 450 boys on the role, Head Schoolmaster Mr. Ryley soon noted the difference between that and a rural school with only 40 pupils, including the first girls admitted to KBGS.

However, he called a spade a spade:-

  • Re a pupil:-“Her work here was never satisfactory, not improbably from conceit due to spoiling at home”
  • Re a parent:-“This parent is rather fussy (he gives me more correspondence and interviews than all the rest put together) and has a high sense of his own importance “
  • Re the Education Office :-“It would seem that the office neither can manage the School itself, nor will leave me to do it in my own way”
  • Re the village :-“we are in danger of forgetting there is an outside world at all.”

1964 – The Mason Plan and KBGS

A major difference of vision occurred during the lifetime of many Chronicle readers, centred on Leicestershire County Council’s decision, as part of the ‘Mason’ Plan of comprehensive education, to move KBGS to Oadby.

20?? – Celebrating Turbulence and Differences of Vision

I also read with interest reference to “ideas for graphic design internally that illustrates historic images of our community”. KBGS, one of England’s oldest schools, certainly has much to offer in this respect and many intriguing tales to tell as part of its story since 1359, a story which under our watch can either be enshrined, celebrated, or lost to future generations.

Roger Garratt 

ex pupil and trainee teacher KBGS.