< Previous | Contents | Next >
The Old Grammar School, Bulwell
 |
IN the very heart of busy, unromantic Bulwell remains this delightful reminder of the spacious Restoration days, when Charles II. was on the throne, and Samuel Pepys was writing his wonderful diary, little dreaming of the fame that it would ultimately bring to him.
The old Grammar School, Bulwell, was erected in 1667, the year after the plague in London, by George Strelley, of Hempshall, "for educating young children and inhabitants of the parish," and lest the governors should find their duties too onerous the foundation deeds decreed that a sum of 6s. 5d. should be spent at their annual meeting on the first of November in cakes and ale!
The schoolmaster was exhorted to use his pupils "mildly" and teach them Latin and "accompts." The charity continued its work until 1885, when the school was discontinued and the building sold. It must be one of the oldest brick buildings left in the neighbourhood.
The earliest brick building in Nottingham was the George and Dragon on the Long-row, built in 1615, a year before Shakespeare’s death, so Bulwell Grammar School is only some forty-two years’ younger.
It displays the narrow and irregular Stuart bricks, the curious rounded Dutch gables and the diapering of bricks of a darker colour than the rest of the wall, features very characteristic of the period.
The heraldry is the blue and silver stripes of the Strelleys, the water buckets on a cross of the Sacheverels, the boar’s head of the Redings, and the mullet and ring of the St. Armands.