King Edward the Sixth School, Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, UK
N 52° 11.431 W 001° 42.482
30U E 588315 N 5783015
King Edward the Sixth (KES) School. Shakespeare's school.
Waymark Code: WM4EZ5
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/14/2008
Views: 42
There has been an educational facility on the site since at least the early thirteenth century. The school was given money and a regular income from the Stratford-upon-Avon Town Trust, which gained a charter, refounding the school, from King Edward VI nine days before he died in 1553.
While there is no evidence to support the claim, the playwright and poet William Shakespeare is believed to have attended the school between the ages of seven to fourteen.
This is believed likely, as his father, John Shakespeare, a glover and wool dealer of good standing, held the office of Bailiff of the Borough in 1568 and William would have, therefore, been entitled to a free place at the school.
In Shakespeare's time the whole School of some forty boys was taught in this room, with desks or forms arranged facing each other along either side of the room; the present desks are only about 200 years old.
The School day began early: a seven o'clock start in winter, six o'clock in summer. Boys entered the School around the age of seven, staying for about seven years until having mastered Latin and learnt a little Greek.
In the eighteenth century the School was reduced to just three boys during a small-pox epidemic. On the beam, directly above the Headmaster’s chair, is the date ‘1776’ and three sets of initials - perhaps those of the three boys This remained the School's sole room until the 1880's and is still used as a classroom and as an assembly hall.
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