Ackworth School
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| Ackworth School | |
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| School type | Independent |
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| Established | 1779 |
| Principal | Peter Simpson |
| Students | 587 |
| Age Range | 2 to 18 |
| Location | Ackworth, Pontefract, West Yorkshire WF7 7LT |
| Website | www.ackworthschool.com/index.php |
Ackworth School is an independent school located at High Ackworth, near Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England.
The current headmaster is Peter Simpson. The previous headmaster was Martin Dickinson, who retired in 2004. The current deputy heads are Lorna Anthony and Jeffery Swales.
Today it still takes some boarders, although most of its 587 pupils are day pupils. About half of the boarding pupils are from overseas and are predominantly Chinese or Japanese. But there are an increasing number of boarders from elsewhere, including Germany, Morocco and other parts of Africa.
Although still a Quaker school, most of its pupils are no longer Quakers. However, pupils are expected to attend a Quaker meeting each morning for assembly, except for Wednesdays when pupils gather for house meetings or extended form period.
The school has four houses: Woolman, Gurney, Penn and Fothergill. They are all named after famous Quakers, and Fothergill house is named after the founder of Ackworth School, John Fothergill. Upon entering the school, each pupil is assigned to one of the four houses for inter-house events, such as football and drama. The winning house in any event gains that event's trophy, which is hung on the house's trophy board in the house dining hall.
Which house a pupil is in also determines which dining hall they have lunch in. The two dining halls are called Boys and Girls Dining Rooms, although the names are only representative of the past, when the boys and girls were divided. These days pupils in Gurney and Fothergill eat in Girls Dining Room and those in Woolman and Penn eat in Boys Dining Room—except at breakfast, where boys and girls are still segregated!
The school has a nursery that takes children aged 2 to 4, a Junior Department that takes children age 5 to 11, and the Senior School for students aged 11 to 18. The boarding facilities cater for Senior School pupils only.
The uniform is grey trousers, light blue shirt, navy school tie, and navy blue jumper for boys, and navy skirt, blue and white striped blouse, and navy jumper for girls. The Sixth Form boys wear a white shirt, grey trousers and either a burgundy jumper or black jacket. Sixth Form girls wear a white blouse, black dress and a burgundy jumper.
The school is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) and SHMIS
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[edit] History
It was founded in 1779 as a boarding school for Quaker boys and girls. Prior to the school's foundation, the building had been a foundling hospital created by Captain Coram.
[edit] Alumni
- Elizabeth Robson (1771–1843), Quaker minister
- Jacob Post (1774–1855), Quaker religious writer
- William Darton (1781–1854), publisher
- Thomas Hancock (1783–1849), physician and epidemiologist
- Joseph Sams (1784–1860), bookseller and antiquities dealer
- Samuel Tuke (1784–1857), philanthropist and asylum reformer
- Susanna Corder (1787–1864), educationist and Quaker biographer
- Thomas Edmondson (1792–1851), inventor of the first railway ticket printing machine
- William Howitt (1792–1879), writer
- Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen (1792–1836), poet and translator
- Henry Ashworth (1794–1880), cotton master
- Benjamin Barron Wiffen (1794–1867), biographer
- George Edmondson (1798–1863), headmaster of Queenwood Hall
- Sarah Ellis (1799–1872), writer and educationist
- John Priestman (1805–1866), worsted manufacturer and pacifist
- James Wilson (1805–1860), economist, founder of The Economist, politician, and Financial Member of the Council of India, 1859–1860
- Anna Richardson (1806–1892), philanthropist, slavery abolitionist and pacifist
- Henry Richardson (1806–1885), philanthropist and pacifist
- Thomas Thomasson (1808–1876), cotton master
- Henry Doubleday (1810–1902), starch manufacturer and comfrey cultivator
- Thomas Lister (1810–1888), poet and naturalist
- Jane Procter (1810–1882), headmistress of Polam Hall, Darlington, and temperance campaigner
- John Bright (1811–1889), politician
- Thomas Harvey (1812–1884), philanthropist
- William Allen Miller (1817–1870), chemist
- Henry Tennant (1823–1910), General Manager, North Eastern Railway, 1870–1891
- William Farrer Ecroyd (1827–1915), worsted manufacturer and politician
- Francis Frith (ca. 1828–1838), photographer
- John Howard Nodal (1831–1909), journalist and dialectologist
- Sir James Reckitt (1833–1924), starch, blue and polish manufacturer
- John Gilbert Baker (1834–1920), botanist
- Henry Bowman Brady (1835–1891), naturalist and pharmacist
- Sir Henry Binns (1837–1899), Prime Minister of Natal, 1897–1899
- Alfred Darbyshire (1839–1908), architect
- Henry Ashby (1846–1908), paediatrician
- Wilson Worsdell (1850–1920), railway engineer
- Joseph Edward Southall (1861–1944), painter and pacifist
- John Henry Salter (1862–1942), naturalist and diarist
- Eva Gilpin (1868–1940), founder and headmistress of the Hall School, Weybridge
- William Bone (1871–1938), chemist and fuel technologist
- Basil Bunting (1900–1985), poet
- Sir Joseph B. Hutchinson (1902–1988), geneticist and professor of agriculture
- Kathleen Tillotson (1906–2001), literary scholar
- Geoffrey Barraclough (1908–1984), historian
- Peter Strevens (1922–1989), linguistic scholar
- James Willstrop (born 1983), squash player
[edit] Further reading
- Ackworth School Annual reports.
- Ackworth School, Then and now: Ackworth School bicentenary exhibition catalogue. (Pub. 1979).
- Alphabetical list of scholars 1779-1979. Prepared by Arthur G. Olver, typescript.
- The Cupola: the Ackworth School magazine, West Yorkshire Archives, Wakefield.
- Foulds, V.E. Ackworth School. (Pub. 1991).
- Foulds, V.E. So numerous a family: 200 years of Quaker education at Ackworth. (Pub. 1979).
- Thompson,H. A history of Ackworth School. (Pub. 1879).
