Barring out is a custom, formerly common in English schools, of barring the master from the school premises. A typical example of this practice was at the school in Bromfield, Cumbria,[1] where, William Hutchinson says, "it was the custom, time out of mind, for the scholars, at Fasting's Even (the beginning of Lent) to depose and exclude the master from the school for three days."[2] During this period the school doors were barricaded and the boys armed with mock weapons. If the master's attempts to re-enter were successful, extra tasks were inflicted as a penalty, and willingly performed by the boys. On the third day terms of capitulation, usually in Latin verse, were signed, and these always conceded the immediate right to indulge in football and a cockfight. The custom was long retained at Eton College and figures in many school stories (i.e. Billy Bunter's Barring Out (1948)[1])
Barring out continued in Falstone, a small village in the North Tyne valley, Northumberland, until 1940 when the then headmaster Mr William Moody, who had not been told of the custom, demanded entrance to his school and the students eventually relented and let him enter.
More serious incidents of barring out have been described for the The Royal School, Armagh, and Belfast Royal Academy in Northern Ireland; and for the Royal High School of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The custom extended to some early Colonial schools, such as William and Mary College, when Dr. James Blair was barred out in 1702 by boys of the college (then a grammar school) and was shot at with pistols upon attempting to enter.[3][4]