page_title: Norwich School
section_title: 18th and 19th centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Norwich School / History / 18th and 19th centuries
caption_attribution_description: English: A painting of Samuel Parr, LLD (1747 - 1825). He is sitting, one hand in pocket, facing the artist.
context_page_description: Norwich School is a selective English independent day school in the close of Norwich Cathedral, Norwich. Among the oldest schools in the United Kingdom, it has a traceable history to 1096 as an episcopal grammar school established by Herbert de Losinga, first Bishop of Norwich. In the 16th century the school came under the control of the city of Norwich and moved to Blackfriars' Hall following a successful petition to Henry VIII. The school was refounded in 1547 in a royal charter granted by Edward VI and moved to its current site beside the cathedral in 1551. In the 19th century it became independent of the city and its classical curriculum was broadened in response to the declining demand for classical education following the Industrial Revolution.
  Early statutes declared the school was to instruct 90 sons of Norwich citizens, though it has since grown to a total enrolment of approximately 1,020 pupils. For most of its history it was a boys' school, before becoming co-educational in the sixth form in 1994 and in every year group in 2010.
context_section_description: The system of education remained largely unchanged until the late 18th century. Dr. Samuel Parr, master from 1778 to 1785 was noted for his use of corporal punishment, commonplace at the time. One pupil remarked:
  Parr's fame for severity spread a sort of panic through the city, especially among the mothers, who would sometimes interpose a remonstrance, which occasioned a ludicrous scene, but seldom availed the culprit, while the wiser were willing to leave their boys in his hands.
   
  Richard Twining, the tea merchant, however, was advised by his brother John to send his eldest son to Norwich, writing of Parr, "I have been told that he flogs too much, but I doubt those from whom I have heard it think any use of punishment too much". Parr's daily teaching was interrupted at midday when he sent a boy to the pastry-cook's across the road for a pie, which he ate by the schoolroom fire. On the resignation of his headship in 1785, historian Warren Derry comments, "an object of terror was gone, but the glory of the place had gone with it".
  John Crome, the landscape painter and founder of the Norwich School of painters, became a drawing master at the school at the beginning of the 19th century, a position he held for many years. The Norwich School of painters was the first provincial art movement in England, and Crome has been described as one of the most prominent British landscape painters alongside Constable and Gainsborough. Several notable artists of the movement were educated at the school including John Sell Cotman, James Stark, George Vincent, John Berney Crome, George Vincent and Edward Thomas Daniell. Frederick Sandys, the "Norwich Pre-Raphaelite", who also attended the school, had his roots in the movement. Some staff, such as Dr. Samuel Forster, were associated with the movement; Forster was headteacher when John Sell Cotman attended the school. Forster became vice president of the Norwich Society of Artists, the society established in 1803 for artists of the movement. Charles Hodgson who taught mathematics and art, and his son David who taught art, were also supporters of Crome.
  The number of pupils fluctuated significantly at the beginning of the 19th century, with usual numbers between 100 and 150 pupils, but falling to eight pupils in 1811 and 30 in 1859. Under the headship of the classical scholar Edward Valpy (1810–1829) pupil numbers increased and the school enjoyed a prosperous period, though its development was hindered by its charter whose trustees preferred to spend most of the £7,000 a year income on the Great Hospital, leaving £300 for the school. Valpy published a popular textbook on Latin style, Elegantiae Latinae (1803), which went through ten editions in his lifetime and The Greek Testament, with English notes, selected and original (1815) in three volumes. In 1837, in the wake of the Municipal Reform Act the patronage of the governors went to twenty-one independent trustees appointed by the Lord Chancellor, separating the governance of the school from the city corporation. As a result of a later 1858 court case Attorney-General v. Hudson the school became independent of the Great Hospital, gaining an endowment of its own and a Board of Governors to administer it. The original objects of the school to provide education for poor boys was abolished and replaced with boarding fees of £60 a year for sons of laymen, £45 for sons of clergymen, and 12 guineas a year for day pupils. A separate school was established to provide training for boys to enter industry and trade called the King Edward VI Middle School or Commercial School. Opened in 1862 and located in the cloisters of Blackfriars' it had 200 pupils and charged a tuition fee of four guineas a year.
  By the mid-19th century the school failed to cater to the requirements of the new urban middle class due to its predominant focus on classical education and was perceived by the city's large Nonconformist community as too exclusively Anglican. The school, however, underwent dramatic reform under Augustus Jessopp, one of the great Victorian reforming headte
caption: Samuel Parr, Head Master (1778–85)
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