Grammar school, now church meeting room and Sunday School. 1539. Grammar School founded by Joan Cooke and in 1540 entrusted to the Corporation of the City, in 1862 sold to the Parish of St Mary de Crypt. Restored 1862 by Medland and Maberley, further restoration 1880.
MATERIALS: ashlar, at rear is red brick with stone details, ashlar stack with circular brick shaft added to front and a brick lateral ridge stack with two tall, diagonal shafts to left; at rear three C19 gabled dormers; slate roof.
PLAN: range parallel with street, of four bays and a wider bay at north end incorporating a carriageway leading to St Mary's Lane; the south end of range abuts the nave of the Church of St Mary de Crypt (qv); the entrance doorway to the former school-room within the carriage way on in the cross wall on the right hand side.
EXTERIOR: two storeys and attic, the bays of the range defined by buttresses with weathered offsets. Crowning string course below the eaves, the buttress in the centre of the four bays to the right from first-floor level supports a wider chimney-stack with moulded corbelling on each side of buttress and capped by weathered offsets; the wider left-hand end bay has carriageway entrance with continuous moulding to jambs and Tudor arch, the arch framed by a hoodmould with diamond stops on the sides, and in the spandrels armorial shields. In each of the four bays to the left a three-light stone mullioned window with arched lights with a flat hoodmould returned on the sides with diamond stops; on the first floor above the archway to left a canted oriel window supported on a moulded corbel base, string course at sill level, and weathered head, three arched lights to the front and a single arched light to each side, on the front of the oriel a stone panel carved with coat of arms of King Henry VIII; in each of four bays to left are C19 three-light windows with details similar to ground-floor windows, all replacing sashes inserted in C18. At rear, facing churchyard, the east wall of red brick has ashlar buttresses with offsets, moulded stone carriageway arch to right; in each bay to left a stone-mullioned three-light window on each floor, above the carriageway arch a two-light window, and to right lighting the stairs a single-light window, all with details similar to windows on the street front; above the north bay to left a timber-framed gabled dormer with barge boards and pair of casements, to left two triangular dormers with fixed lights.
INTERIOR: within the carriageway a timber-framed partition to left with doorway to stairs up to room above, originally the schoolmasters' room, and entrance doorway on right in a stone rectangular frame with moulded stone jambs and Tudor arch; in the four bays to right the former school-room believed to have been originally full height, and probably divided in C17 into lower and upper rooms by insertion of floor with exposed transverse and central lateral beams supported by three timber posts; at the north end of lower room early C17 panelling; on the first floor similar chamfered beams and vestiges of C16 ashlar fireplace with adjacent spiral stair behind modern coverings. 5-bay tenoned single-purlin roof: cambered tie beams with plain chamfer, vestiges of wind braces to lower tiers, mostly double raking strut trusses with collar; coupled rafters at ridge. Building used by the Sunday School founded by Robert Raikes. The brickwork is notable for being an early example of its use in this region.
1528 John Cooke, mercer and four times Mayor of the City of Gloucester, made a will in which he directed his wife to “stablish and ordeyn a continuall frescole of gramer for the erudicion of children and scolers” by a “scole maister to kepe scole and teche gramer freely”
1539 Dame Joan Cooke drew up a tripartite deed between the Mayor and Burgesses of Gloucester and the Bailiffs and Citizens of Worcester as to the endowments for the benefit of the school.
This was the era of the founding of many of the grammar schools which for centuries were to determine the pattern of education in this country. The New Learning of the Renaissance, the intellectual and spiritual challenges of the Reformation, the growing wealth of a new merchant class aware of the need for more schools and perhaps also thinking of building memorials to their own benevolence and generosity, were some of the influences that contributed to the new foundations.
The close connection between the Church and education were preserved in the siting of the original “scole house” in Southgate Street, which still stands today: it was built on land that was until 1529 part of the burial ground of the Church of St Mary de Crypt. This church, one of the few medieval city-centre churches still in use in Gloucester, was for many years known as the church of The Blessed Mary of Chiste, and the school, immediately adjoining the church, was called the “Crist” or “Christ” School. By the middle of the 17th Century it was known either as the Grammar School or Crypt School .
This first of four, brand new, sites to be occupied by the Crypt School would have been a splendid new edifice, with gleaming Cotswold stone fronting Southgate Street, and warm Tudor brickwork on the rear elevation.. The building, now known as The Old Crypt Schoolroom, is used by the church of St Mary de Crypt as a parish room and meeting room, but in 1539 it would have been a brand new, ‘state of the art’ school building for those first few ’scolers’. It would have stood out among the other buildings of Southgate Street; being, with the churches of St Mary de Crypt, and St Michael at The Cross, probably the only stone built buildings in those early tudor years. The lower floor was the Schoolroom, with an upper chamber for the Master. The school crest and the pre-Elizabethan city coat of arms adorn the handsome bay window of the Master’s chamber.
When recent cohorts of the Year 7 entry have gathered in the Schoolroom, numbering some 118 typically, it is hard to imagine how they could possibly have been taught in the original room, yet by 1863 the numbers being taught had risen to 105 and a new site was needed.
1861 The Barton Street site(now part of Eastgate Street) was occupied on a temporary basis. These premises were later to be occupied by Sir Thomas Rich’s until the 1960’s.
1889 The Crypt moved into a thirds set of purpose-built buildings on the site known to generations of Old Cryptians as “Friars Orchard”. This site was the orchard of the medieval Franciscan Friary of the Grey Friars, and had survived as unbuilt land since medieval times, until the land pressures of the Victorian age of growth. This enabled the School to develop a new home a mere ‘cricket ball’s throw’ from the Old Crypt Schoolroom and its origin in 1539. With a spacious playing field lined with a dense hedge and tall trees along Brunswick Road, this was to be home to the school for the next fifty years, until the years of the Second World War, when a further move was need , with over 400 boys now on roll, and indeed classrooms in many neighbouring buildings had to be borrowed to house classes for the growing school
1939 The highlight of the School’s Quatercentenary was the 4th July laying of the foundation stone of the fourth new site of the school. The foundation stone, of Cotswold stone from Painswick was laid by H.R.H The Duchess of Gloucester. She had been made an Honorary Freeman of the City in the morning, and in the afternoon she was welcomed to the Podsmead site by the Chairman of Governors, Dr D.E.Finlay, telling her that “in the new building, the design for which have been selected in open competition, all the classrooms would have a south-east aspect ... the school would be surrounded by ample playing fields.”
1943 It was not until the Autumn of 1943 that the Crypt moved to its fourth site, Podsmead. Wartime shortages meant that not only had it taken much longer to build, but it was still unfinished, so Staff in that first term at Podsmead had the added distraction of workmen in and out of classrooms finishing off work. It is salutary to note that when built it was actually in countryside, and on land originally bought by Joan Cooke at the time of the School’s foundation. The Scouts, and the Army Cadets however were delighted with the new school, with the facilities “better than ever Friar’s Orchard at its best” and “a splendid parade-ground, but also, which is more to our liking, with fields in which to manoeuvre, with hedges behind which to take cover, and with ditches in which to crawl”.( I suspect the hedges have never gone out of fashion for one purpose or another!)
1944 The school settled into a “regular peaceful routine” with some 250 boys eating school dinner, buses arriving late, and the advent finally of electricity! In the Autumn the school Hall was opened, though the stage had yet to get its floor. This year was to be a year of “Education Acts, V.E. Days and a General Election”. Under the 1944 Education Act the Crypt became a fully ‘Maintained Secondary School’ and lost its (fee paying) Junior School. Entry to the Crypt was by examination, ‘The Eleven Plus’. There were minor additions to the school there-after, but it was not until the phase of growth in the Grant Maintained years that there were to be significant changes to the site.