For more than 320 years boys did what boys do, setting to work with pocket knives and, perhaps later, compass points to carve out their names in the desks at school.
Among them were William Wordsworth and his brother John, the names clearly gouged out in an oak desk and a windowsill at Hawkshead Grammar School. They are ancient legacies that say these boys and hundreds more like them were there, and provide charming links with the past that resonate with visitors to the school museum today.
The museum’s current exhibition explores grammar school education from 1585-1909, through documents and objects that show what the boys learned, read, wore, ate and what games they played.
It also has a permanent exhibition on William Wordsworth, which has been expanded and is now housed in the headmaster's study on the first floor.
William arrived as a nine-year-old from his home in Cockermouth and was a pupil there from 1779 until 1787 when he left for St John’s College, Cambridge. He was introduced to poetry by his favourite schoolmaster, William Taylor (who sadly died as incumbent head aged just 32), and the freedom he was given to roam the countryside, as well as experiences there, fuelled his contemplation and writing. Several references to his happy time in Hawkshead can be read in Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem The Prelude.
However, Hawkshead Grammar School had already been established for nearly 200 years by the time William arrived having been founded by Edwin Sandys, later Archbishop of York, of nearby Graythwaite, in 1585, and given a charter by Queen Elizabeth I, which is still on display in the school.
Up until this point, the monks of Furness Abbey had been responsible for local education but with a need to expand and improve literacy a swathe of small grammar schools opened.
Initially, around 45 boys, aged eight-eighteen, were taught at Hawkshead. They were seated at six ‘forms’ or simple benches around the walls of the ground floor classroom. The headmaster’s desk was at the top of the room by the fire. He taught the higher ability boys and the assistant master, or usher, taught the younger pupils.
Education was classical Latin, and later Greek, together with religious instruction.
The intent was to educate future clergy, for them to read the scriptures in their original languages. A few very able students would learn Hebrew.
Mathematics, chiefly Euclidean geometry, was taught in Greek. The boys learned verbally by rote and wrote with quills, using penknives to sharpen them. In winter, the schoolroom would be lit by candlelight.
After 90 years, former student Daniel Rawlinson, who had made his fortune as a London vintner, rebuilt the school in stone and, in 1669, started its library. Daniel and his friends donated 115 books, mostly Latin and Greek classics and theology, reflecting the traditional curriculum. Daniel’s friendship with the diarist Samuel Pepys led to some of their circle donating books on astronomy, mathematics and geography.
The school day ran from 6am-5pm with two hours for lunch – the pupils drank three pints of beer a day because the water was unsafe and beer provided much needed nutrition, and they were allowed to smoke. They had three weeks off for Easter and Christmas and by the time the Wordsworths arrived summer holidays had been introduced too.
Although it was a boarding school there was no accommodation contained within the school building. Instead, pupils lodged at the headmaster’s house opposite the school, in a building in the village that is now The Little Ice Cream Shop or with local families. Among them were the Wordsworth boys who lived with Ann and Hugh Tyson. Mrs Tyson’s handwritten ledger of charges to the boys’ family was found 150 years later in a barn by none other than Beatrix Potter, who donated it to the school museum via her husband William Heelis, who was clerk to the governors from 1909 until his death.
Edward Christian, the brother of the sailor and mutineer Fletcher Christian, from Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, was briefly headmaster during Wordsworth’s time.
Another alumnus was Lord Brougham, who became Lord High Chancellor and was instrumental in abolishing slavery, and William Pearson, who was a pupil and later a master at the school, who founded the Astronomical Society of London, now the Royal Astronomical Society.
Pearson, and Rawlinson, are examples of the sociability mobility afforded by the school: Pearson was a west Cumbrian farm boy who did not start school until he was 18 and worked as an assistant master to help pay for his education.
The school had a benevolent side too. Edwin Sandys endowed the school with sufficient land and property for the education to be free. In 1717 another Sandys, the Reverend Thomas, left a bequest to educate poor boys in the parish and five-ten ‘bluecoat’ boys were taught English and accounting each year.
The name ‘bluecoat’ is derived from the 16th-century dress of foundlings housed at Christ’s Hospital, a school for disadvantaged children, and these Hawkshead boys were given a suit of clothes which included a blue jacket.
At its peak the school grew to 100 boys under headmaster James Peake, who was educated at Manchester Grammar School, and was one of the leading schools in the north of England by the late 1700s and early 1800s, which is why the Wordsworths went there.
In his 2024 book, Education Through the Ages, Aidan Warlow describes Hawkshead Grammar School as “exceptional”.
However, by 1909 the roll had plummeted to just six pupils and the school closed. Since then it has been preserved by its dedicated governors, a small staff team led by Joanne Heather and volunteers. Neil Salisbury is a guide who greets visitors and his wife, Claire, is a governor and is helping to conserve the museum’s precious book collection.
The museum started its Library Project in 2020 to further preserve the library, volunteers having been trained by accredited book conservators. Among the collection are donations from Wordsworth, Bishop Sandys’ bible and books owned by Daniel Rawlinson’s bibliophile grandson Richard, whose main collection was donated to the famous Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Some of the books contain doodles drawn by pupils including one of a teacher being shot by a schoolboy and another of a pupil who bears a striking resemblance to Wordsworth himself.
The museum has recently been awarded a grant by Westmorland Furness Council to install new cases which will allow it to display any book from the collection safely.
In 2025 – the school building’s 350th anniversary year – it plans to show some of the rare folio editions donated at the time of the library’s founding in the 1670s.
• The Education Through the Ages exhibition continues until October 31, when the museum closes for the winter. Until then it is open from 11am-4pm, Thursday-Monday. Entry is £5 for adults, £1 for under-16s.
The museum stocks a selection of books including William Wordsworth biographies, poetry collections and books on Cumbria, postcards, quill pens, slate workboards, art prints and stickers and its own branded merchandise.
hawksheadgrammar.org.uk
This is a version of an article that appeared in Cumbria Life in October. For a limited time, you can get six issues of the magazine for just £9.99. Visit our website at cumbrialife.co.uk, select any six issue subscription and enter the voucher code OFFER24 when prompted to redeem your discount.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here