Blue Coat School - Kendal, Cumbria UK
Posted by: 
martlakes
N 54° 19.557 W 002° 44.858
30U E 516413 N 6019817
In this yard Thomas Sandes (1606-81), cloth merchant and former Mayor of Kendal, founded a school and eight almshouses (a 'hospital') for poor widows. The gatehouse was the master's house, and it became known as the Blue Coat School.
Waymark Code: WM343M
Location: United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/06/2008
Views: 69
Blue-coat schools originated in Tudor times, Christ's Hospital in London was the first. By the beginning of the eighteenth century there were about 60 around the country. The name came from the long blue coats the pupils wore. Blue was the cheapest dye at the time.
Thomas Sandes, a worthy of the town in the 17th century, whose name is remembered by the road, Sandes Avenue, and in Sandes Hospital in Highgate, was a cloth merchant and Mayor of Kendal in 1647. He devised his own Coat of Arms which was an amalgam of the Shearman Dyers' Arms and those of the Sandes (Sandys) family, neither of which was he entitled to use.
His spurious Coat of Arms can be seen today on the outside of the gatehouse of Sandes Hospital. A swag of woollen cloth surmounts the shield and the initials T S K refer to Thomas and Katherine Sandes, with the date 1659, probably when construction of the Hospital was begun.
In a book: "John Haygarth, FRS (1740-1827): A Physician of the Enlightenment" by Christopher Charles Booth, we are told that:
"Dr. Briggs, a clergyman of Kendal, reorganised the Kendal Blue-Coat School so as to include a day school of industry for the children of the poor of his town."
This was probably around 1786, and based on the success of Haygarth's work in Chester's Blue-coat school.
By 1831 Samuel Lewis wrote the following in "A Topographical Dictionary of England"
"The Blue-coat school and hospital were founded and endowed with estates by Thomas Sandes in 1670; the former for the education of forty boys, who are taught the art of carding and weaving, and thirty girls, being children of the inhabitants of Kendal; the latter [the hospital] as a residence of eight poor widows, six to be chosen from Kendal, one from Skelsmergh, and the other from Strickland, and all to be nominated by the mayor and aldermen, as trustees of the charity : the inmates receive the weekly sum of five shillings each, and a provision is made for a schoolmaster to read prayers to the widows twice a day, and to teach poor children preparatory to their entering the free-school : the founder bequeathed a library to the Blue-coat school, which has been increased by subsequent additions."
The gatehouse hasn't changed a great deal, and the alms houses are still in the yard behind, still home to elderly folk. The houses were rebuilt in 1852 by Kendal architect Miles Thompson. In 1886 the school merged with Kendal Grammar School which was succeeded in 1980 by Kirkbie Kendal School, whose trustees still own the property.
The gatehouse is now used as a tea room and printers. Set in the wall of the gateway is the original collection box for the 'poor widows'.