Wellingborough School
Building on a long and
Neil Lyon Foundation Director Wellingborough School
glorious history
In 2020 Wellingborough School celebrated its 425th anniversary. T e school’s Foundation Director Neil Lyon talks about its history and the school’s plans for a new Sixth Form Centre.
426 years old? Quite an achievement! T e school was founded in the reign of the fi rst Queen Elizabeth, and here we still are! We have lived through the Gunpowder Plot, two world wars, and now we have weathered the global pandemic. Despite everything, pupil numbers are higher than at any time in the past three years.
What have been the school’s highlights down the centuries? Managing to survive the bad times! T ere were tricky times in the 1600s under Oliver Cromwell, and the school was heading for very rocky waters in the 1930s during the Depression. Over the past 50 years we have successfully evolved from a boys’ boarding school to a fully co-educational day school, for children aged three to 18, and we are a more resilient business as a result.
Has the school produced anyone famous? It all depends what you mean by famous. Alumni in the limelight include the BBC sports editor Dan Roan and the Reverend Richard Coles, but we have also produced our fair share of university professors, county cricketers, army generals and entrepreneurs. I like to boast about George Drew, a POW in World War 2 and serial escaper who ended up in Colditz Castle; he used to say that, having been a pupil at Wellingborough School in the 1930s, Colditz was a piece of cake!
How did the school celebrate its 425th anniversary last year? We announced in the spring of 2020 that we would build a new £1.7m Sixth Form Centre. We launched our fundraising campaign and then two weeks later came the fi rst national lockdown. So, we put the development project on hold for one year, while we all weathered the storm. We were thrilled that HRH T e Princess Royal came to visit us in October, taking face masks in her stride, and Northamptonshire stonemasons Boden and Ward are designing a suitable commemorative plaque as I speak.
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ALL THINGS BUSINESS
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