St Peter's School

St Peter's School is the fourth oldest School in the world. Founded in the Dark Ages of Britain, after the Romans had retreated from our shores and when England was carved up into several kingdoms, much of its early history is sketchily drawn. However, some facts are clear. St Peter's School was founded by St Paulinus of York in 627 AD. He founded both the School and York Minster in the same year on the same site. At that time they would of course have looked very different; small wooden buildings in the middle of a compact, ramshackle town on the River Ouse. The School began to evolve in the 700s. In 705, St John of Beverley became Head Master. In 741 disaster struck, and both school and Minster burned down. Both were rebuilt by Archbishop Aelberht. The Archbishop later travelled Europe collecting rare texts, and used them in the St Peter's curriculum. In 778, Northumbrian scholar Alcuin became Head Master. The pupils (all boys at this time) studied Latin, grammar, rhetoric, time-reckoning, logic, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, and natural history as part of a varied classical curriculum. In 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, the city of York was sacked. William I appointed Thomas of Bayeux as Archbishop and the School flourished. In 1289 the School changed premises in the first of many moves over its long history. The move took the School from the site of the current nave of the Minster to a house near the Minster's present east end. Fifty pupils were housed in nearby St Mary's Abbey. Around 1350, the Black Death visited the city, plaguing the citizens of York for around twenty years. The population of the town was devastated, and research suggests that the incumbent Schoolmaster was probably a victim of the disease. In the sixteenth century, the School was given a Royal Charter by Philip and Mary, and in 1557 moved premises to new buildings in the Horsefair, just outside the city walls. Less than twenty years later, in 1575, our most infamous student attended St Peter's - Guy Fawkes. In 1644 the school buildings were destroyed in the Siege of York. The boys were moved back inside the city walls and the school continued in Bedern, a former refectory and dormitory for clergy.