The Crypt School

The Crypt School is an outstanding mixed grammar school, located in the historic city of Gloucester with a proud and distinguished history stretching back to 1539.

In 1528 John Cooke, mercer and four times Mayor of the City of Gloucester, made a will in which he directed his wife to “stablish and ordeyn a continuall frescole of gramer for the erudicion of children and scolers” by a “scole maister to kepe scole and teche gramer freely”.

The following year, Dame Joan Cooke drew up a tripartite deed between the Mayor and Burgesses of Gloucester and the Bailiffs and Citizens of Worcester as to the endowments for the benefit of the school. This was the era of the founding of many of the grammar schools which for centuries were to determine the pattern of education in this country. The New Learning of the Renaissance, the intellectual and spiritual challenges of the Reformation, the growing wealth of a new merchant class aware of the need for more schools and perhaps also thinking of building memorials to their own benevolence and generosity, were some of the influences that contributed to the new foundations.

The close connection between the Church and education were preserved in the siting of the original “scole house” in Southgate Street, Gloucester which still stands today: it was built on land that was (until 1529) part of the burial ground of the Church of St Mary de Crypt. This church, one of the few medieval city centre churches still in use in Gloucester, was for many years known as the church of The Blessed Mary of Chiste, and the school, immediately adjoining the church, was called the “Crist” or “Christ” School. By the middle of the 17th Century it was known either as the Grammar School or Crypt School .

This was to be first of four sites occupied by the Crypt School and it woulld have been a splendid new edifice, with gleaming Cotswold stone fronting Southgate Street, and warm Tudor brickwork on the rear elevation. This building is now known as The Old Crypt Schoolroom and is used by the church of St Mary de Crypt as a parish room and meeting room; in 1539 it would have been a brand new, ‘state of the art’ school building for those first few ’scolers’. It would have stood out amongst the other buildings of Southgate Street because it was (along with the churches of St Mary de Crypt, and St Michael at The Cross) probably the only stone building in those early Tudor years. The schoolroom occupied the lower floor, with an upper chamber for the Master. The school crest and the pre-Elizabethan city coat-of-arms adorn the handsome bay window of the Master’s chamber.

When recent cohorts of the Year 7 entry have gathered in the Schoolroom, numbering some 118 typically, it is hard to imagine how they could possibly all have been taught in the original room, yet by 1863 the numbers of scholars had risen to 105 and a new site was needed.

So, in 1861 the Barton Street site (now part of Eastgate Street) was used as a temporary base and (later occupied by Sir Thomas Rich’s School until the 1960’s) and in 1889 The Crypt moved into a third set of purpose-built buildings known to generations of Old Cryptians as “Friars Orchard” because it was the orchard of the medieval Franciscan Friary of the Grey Friars; it had survived as unbuilt land since medieval times until the land pressures of the Victorian age of growth. Here, the school could develop a new home, a mere ‘cricket ball’s throw’ from the original site. With a spacious playing field lined with a dense hedge and tall trees along Brunswick Road, this was to be home to the school for the next fifty years - until the Second World War, when a further move was needed to accommodate over 400 boys!

On 1939, the School’s quatercentenary saw the laying of the foundation stone of the fourth - and current - school building in Podsmead on 4th July. The stone (Cotswold stone from Painswick) was laid by H. R. H The Duchess of Gloucester who had been made an Honorary Freeman of the city in the morning. The Chairman of Governors, Dr D. E. Finlay, told her that “in the new building, the design for which have been selected in open competition, all the classrooms would have a south-east aspect . . . the school would be surrounded by ample playing fields. ” It is salutary to note here that when the school was built it was actually in countryside, and on land originally bought by Joan Cooke at the time of the School’s foundation.

It was not until the Autumn of 1943 that the Crypt actually moved into its new site because of the building delays caused by WWII - and it was still unfinished! In that first term, staff had the added distraction of workmen in and out of classrooms finishing off work! The Scouts and Army Cadets were delighted with the new school, with “fields in which to manoeuvre, with hedges behind which to take cover, and with ditches in which to crawl”.

From 1944, the school settled into a “regular peaceful routine” - and the advent finally of electricity! In the autumn term, the school Hall was opened. This year was to be a year of “Education Acts, V. E. Days and a General Election”. Under the 1944 Education Act the Crypt became a fully ‘Maintained Secondary School’ and lost its (fee paying) Junior School. Entry to the Crypt was now by examination, ‘The Eleven Plus’. There were minor additions to the school thereafter, but it was not until the phase of growth in the grant-maintained years that there were to be significant changes to the site.

Girls were admitted into the Sixth Form from 1987 and the school achieved Grant Maintained status in 1992. Five years later, Phase 1 of the building project was completed with the opening of new the Science and Sixth Form Block. Phase 2 was completed in 1999 with the addition of the Business Studies and IT rooms. Phase 3 of the building work was completed in 2002 with the opening of the Sports Hall. Phase 4 saw the opening of new facilities for science, maths and IT, and re-structured art rooms and a new school reception area. 2009 saw Phase 5 completed with the £1. 4 million Sixth Form Centre and Library and the conversion of the old library into classrooms. A new Food Technology suite was added in 2010 and, in 2011 the old gym was converted into a new drama and activity space and a new fitness suite and there was a complete redevelopment of the school driveway and other hard surface areas; an upgrade of the school Music rooms and the girls' changing rooms also occurred this year. From 2012-13, the school roofs and internal ceilings were replaced and the brand new engineering block was opened in 2015.