| Sir James Macdonald Cobban | |
|---|---|
| Born | 14 September 1910 Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire |
| Died | 19 April 1999 Yeovil, Somerset |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Teacher and lay leader |
| Known for | Headmaster of Abingdon School |
| Spouse | Lorna Mary Marlow (1913–1961), |
Sir James Macdonald Cobban, CBE, DL (14 September 1910 – 19 April 1999) was an English educator and headmaster, as well as a prominent lay leader in the Church of England. He was the headmaster of Abingdon School from 1947 to 1970 and is largely credited with bringing the school from relative obscurity to national recognition in Britain.
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Cobban was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, the second son and youngest of five children of Alexander Macdonald Cobban (1864–1956), surveyor for Scunthorpe, and his wife, Kate Helen Rowbottom (1875–1958). He received his early education at Pocklington School in Yorkshire after being granted a £50 scholarship. He left Pocklington in 1929 and was granted a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read classics and had great success. Cobban achieved a double first in the Classical Tripos examinations, receiving the Thirwell Medal and Gladstone Prize, and was awarded marks second only to his contemporary Enoch Powell. Cobban was also given a Sandys studentship which financed him for six months at the University of Vienna and for six months at the British School in Rome. In 1932, at the University of Vienna, he witnessed a Jewish student being chased by a gang of young fascists wielding cudgels, an experience which Cobban described in his memoir as "seared in my mind".
In 1933 Cobban took a position teaching Latin and Greek at King Edward VI School, Southampton. Whilst there, he wrote a Latin reader, "Civis Romanus", which was widely used in the latter half of the 20th century, selling over half a million copies.[1] In 1936, he took a post at Dulwich College, where he worked until the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war, Cobban served with the Directorate of Military Intelligence and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. An attack of appendicitis during the run-up to D-Day prevented his participation in the Normandy invasion, and he arrived in France six days after the Allied landing. Many of Cobban's responsibilities before and after the invasion involved planning for the occupation of Germany. When that became a reality, Cobban was assigned to help organise local governments in Germany on a democratic basis. In his memoir, he fondly recalls working alongside German civil servants, occasionally using Latin as a common tongue when his German and their English failed.
Cobban briefly returned to Dulwich in 1946 before arriving at Abingdon School) as Headmaster in 1947. He served for twenty-four years as headmaster, transforming it from a provincial grammar school of 250 boys into Abingdon School, a direct grant school drawing pupils from families associated with Oxford and the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, as well as from the local area, and numbering, when he retired in 1970, 630 boys. This was exactly — and intentionally — ten times the number for which John Roysse had re-founded it in 1563.
Cobban had a number of interests and held a number of appointments outside Abingdon School; from 1966 he was Deputy Lieutenant of Berkshire, and from 1974 of Oxfordshire. A JP from 1950, he chaired the Abingdon bench from 1964 to 1974. In 1971 he conducted an inquiry into the church in Bedford for Bishop Robert Runcie. From 1970 to 1985 he represented the Oxford diocese on the general synod (where he served from 1979 on the panel of chairmen), and from 1975 to 1982 he was vice-president of the diocesan synod. He wrote a regular column for his diocesan magazine. He governed numerous schools and colleges and from 1972 to 1982, the last six of those years as deputy chairman, was on the committee of the Governing Bodies Association. As a principal architect of the assisted places scheme, he was knighted in 1982.
Cobban married Lorna Marlow in 1942 and had four daughters (Mary, Diana, Hilary, and Helena) and one son (John, who died at the age of two from a fall). Lorna died of bronchiectasis in 1961, leaving James to raise his four daughters on his own, although his sister later gave up her own career as an educator to assist in the children's care.
Cobban was a lifelong member of the Church of England and in later life a prominent lay leader. He served in the General Synod for fifteen years, and for three years served as its chairman, the highest position a layman can hold in the Church of England. Cobban preached and officiated in his retirement at a group of six parishes in Dorset from 1986 to 1997.
In the epigraph of his memoir One Small Head he wrote, "I may not be a very good Christian, but I cannot imagine any life without the Christian church."
Cobban was appointed CBE in 1971, moved to Steventon, then to Sherborne, and finally to sheltered housing run by one of his daughters in Yeovil. He died at Tyndale Nursing Home, Yeovil, Somerset, on 19 April 1999, and his ashes were interred on 26 April in Trent churchyard, Somerset.