On this day … 2 September 1728

According to Henry Clemesha in his History of Preston, a school for twenty-five girls in Preston opened thanks to the efforts of the vicar, the Rev Samuel Peploe. It was, apparently, built on a parcel of land that came with the vicarage on the north side of Preston.

The Rev Peploe had already founded a school at Cadley in 1707 and shortly after had extended the school for twenty-five boys which had opened in a converted stable and hay loft in Main Sprit Weind. The Preston draper Roger Sudell had left the stable for use as a school in his will. He died in 1704.

Roger Sudell’s gift was commemorated with a tablet in the parish church, paid for by his nephew, Christopher Sudell, which read:

‘Below lie the remains of Mr. Roger Sudell, who endowed a catechetical school for the poor boys in this town; one conspicuously singular for his gravity, probity, and piety. He lived unmarried, died very old, and was interred Dec. 28th, 1704. To continue whose memory his nephew C. Sudell, prebendary of Chester, hath fixed here this small tablet, 1732.’

Roger Sudell also left £10 a year to pay the schoolmaster’s salary and £2 to buy books. His nephew drew up strict rules for the school.

These laid down that the pupils had to ‘attend constantly’ until they were ‘fully educated in reading, writing, and their catechism, and till fit to go to trade or apprenticed and no longer’. They were ‘to wait on their master to church and not to be seen elsewhere at public worship’. If they did go to another church, they lost their place.

Both the schools in the town were what were known as Blue Coat Schools. These were schools for poor children, the first of which had opened in the sixteenth century in London, but many more were later established around the country. They got their name from the distinctive uniforms that the pupils wore.

A pupil at one of the schools in the late eighteenth century, the essayist Leigh Hunt, provided the following description:

‘Our dress was of the coarsest and quaintest kind, but was respected out of doors, and is so. It consisted of a blue drugget gown, or body, with ample coats to it; a yellow vest underneath in winter-time; small-clothes of Russia duck; worsted yellow stockings; a leathern girdle; and a little black worsted cap, usually carried in the hand. I believe it was the ordinary dress of children in humble life, during the reign of the Tudors. We used to flatter ourselves that it was taken from the monks…’

The Preston schools survived until 1817, when both were amalgamated with the recently established National Schools. For a few years after, the Main Sprit Weind school still preserved the name of its benefactor. According to Peter Whittle, in his 1822 history:

‘The Blue School, in Midsprit-wiend, is now a dwelling-house, and is fast falling to decay; the following inscription still remains over the door way. “Mr. Roger Sudell, Bachelor, his Catechetical School. A. D. 1701”.’

The earlier date disagrees with the other sources. But Whittle would have been able to inspect the inscription himself, and he gives that date for the school’s foundation elsewhere in his history.

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Sources
Clemesha’s History of Preston
Whittle’s History of Preston
Hardwick’s History of Preston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluecoat_school