This year has seen several celebrations, including 400 years of the City’s 1621 Charter and 300 years of the rebuild of Worcester Guildhall in 1721.

As the year comes to a close, the King’s School is celebrating 480 years since it was re-founded by King Henry VIII.

Education was central to the medieval church, and Worcester Priory, like many monastic communities, had delivered some form of teaching since the seventh century.

This would make use of the expensive books that were accumulating in the library and the talented scribes in the Scriptorium who copied many of them.

However by the 16th century, King Henry VIII began to turn his attentions to what he saw as a rich and corrupt church, governed by the Pope.

His actions in turn led to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. At the start of 1541, Worcester Priory was closed and it looked like education would come to a shuddering halt.

On December 7 1541, letters declared that education would continue, with the re-founding of a school now known as King’s School, Worcester.

Henry VIII wrote to the Chancellor of Augmentations, who was dealing with the closure of the monasteries and nominated John Pether as the Schoolmaster of this ‘old’, new school.

He was highly recommended as ‘a personne boothe for his learning and also for his sobrietie very mete and apte to be by us appointed Scolemaister’.

The Charter that created the King’s School listed different posts including a dean, 10 prebendaries, 10 minor cannons, two schoolmasters, an organist, 10 lay clerks and 10 choristers.

The book of statutes which was created in 1544, would create the chapter or governing body.

This also described the type of scholars, who would start school from the age of nineand remain there until the age of 15 – ‘Forty boys, poor and destitute of the help of friends, with an inborn aptitude for learning’.

The scholars had to have basic skills in reading and writing and able to recite the Lord’s Prayer, the Angelus, the Apostles Creed and the Ten Commandments.

Each scholar was also allocated two-and-a-half yards of cloth to make suitable clothes to be worn in church services.

To keep the quality, it was said that this cloth should be purchased at a cost of 3s. 4d. a yard. This was given in the winter months ‘so that they may celebrate the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ with new clothes and new minds’.

The dean and chapter went on to appoint a master and usher. Both had to be of good character, pious and with a talent for teaching. The master had to know Latin and Greek, the usher had to know Latin only.

The master was responsible for the general running of the school and taught the fourth, fifth and sixth forms. The usher was designated to teach the first, second and third forms and to start the school day with prayers and psalms every morning at six o’clock.

In the years that followed, the school made use of some of the old monastic buildings to the south of the cathedral. This including the monk’s refectory, known as College Hall today, and the grand Edgar Tower that was once the main gatehouse into the monastery.

School days lasted around 11 hours and scholars were taught Latin, rhetoric, history, geography, mythology, and music.

During the very few breaks they had during the school day, scholars were encouraged to walk around and talk to one another in the cloisters. They were expected to be ‘of a gently and manly appearance and free from all lowness’.

Happy Birthday, King’s School, Worcester, and may the future be as long and fruitful as the first 480 years.