The First of 2 Articles about Trinity written in 1977 by Lou Warwick 

School with a Trinity of Names

If grammar schools had a section in the Guinness Book of Records, Northampton might well figure in it, two of its former schools in this category being notable for long (433 years) and short (five years) periods of existence.

Until three years ago the town had three grammar schools, one for boys (Northampton Grammar School, Billing Road), one for girls (Northampton School for Girls, St. George's Avenue) and one mixed (Trinity Grammar-school, Trinity Avenue).

Founded in 1541, with Lawrence Washington, of Sulgrave Manor, as one of its trustees, the boys' establishment survived as a grammar school until 1974, when it was submerged, along with the other two, in the tidal wave of comprehension (or is it comprehensiveness?). Thus it lasted well over four centuries. Whether the death by drowning of such venerable schools amounts to educational murder (or "sacrilege" as a retiring grammar school teacher wrote in the "Daily Telegraph". the other day) is a point I do not propose to pursue here.

The mixed Trinity Grammar School had, on the other hand, a life of a mere five years under that name. Taken together the two contrasting cases surely merit a mention in any record of scholastic longevity.

But "Trinity Grammar School" is only one of three names which the school had in the first 28 years of its life, prior to 1974 when it became simply Trinity School, an upper school in the comprehensive system. The other two names, making up the trinity, were the Technical High School and Trinity High School. And thereby hang tales of confusion of identity, angry debate and allegations of snobbery.

The term now commencing at Trinity school marks the 20th anniversary of full occupation of the present premises, a period inaugurated by no less a person than the then minister of Education, Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd. But the school had its roots half-a-mile away in a Junior Technical School set up in St. George's Avenue, opposite the Racecourse, as part of Northampton College of Technology. In those days the present site of Trinity School was occupied by allotments. 

The first newspaper mention of the Junior Technical School which I have come across is of the staff and pupils joining in a service on the playground of the College of Technology on Thursday, September 4, 1942, marking Britain's entry into the fourth year of war. That day the wheels of industry and of educational and other establishments in Britain stopped for 15 minutes. At the Northampton college a B.B.C. service marking the anniversary was broadcast, pupils of the evacuated Paddington School joining in the parade. 

Two years later, in 1944 came the Butler Act for the post-war reorganisation of education, adopting the entirely new principle that secondary education should be available to all up to the limit of their ability and capacity. It was all part of the brave new world which was to follow the War. 

The sub-committees set up in Northampton to plan for local changes decided to create a Technical High School as part of the new secondary system thus "recognising the need for the fullest possible application of science to industry in the future." 

Thus, at the war's end, the Junior Technical School, which had taken pupils at 13-plus, became the Technical High School, with an intake at 11-plus (as regards age intake the wheel seems today to have turned full circle). The scheme was for boys and girls to be in the proportion of three to one - a three-form entry of boys and one of girls, with a total roll of 630. Appointed as the first headmaster was Mr. B. S. Howard who was to remain in charge until the summer of 1974. 

The school had two problems, of premises and identity. Though it now had a separate status it continued to share the buildings of the College of Technology and this led to many difficulties despite excellent relationships between the two. As Mr. Howard recalled at the Speech Day of 1958, the first in the new premises: "During the past years the school has gone through every possible contortion and some impossible ones too. From force of circumstances it has operated at various times without most of the things which are usually regarded as necessities in schools and for one year it operated in two different halves indifferent buildings!" This reference was to the time when half of the school had moved into the completed part of the new premises, the other half remaining in the College. 

I had hoped to hear some further elaboration on the problems of shared and divided premises from Mr. Howard, who retired three years ago but he politely declined to reminisce, preferring to "stay retired." 

I would also have liked to ask him about the school's even greater problem of identity during most of his 28 years as headmaster. For it was only after a battle against authority and against what was sometimes alleged to be entrenched snobbery that the school was finally allowed in 1969, to call itself a "grammar." It was a belated victory for by that time the name then adopted was already obsolescent, doomed under the interim scheme for educational reorganisation which preceded the comprehensive system. 

One senses something of a heart-cry in the remarks of the headmaster at the 1960 Speech Day. Why should secondary schools be labelled with names like modern, technical and grammar, asked Mr. Howard. "It might have been better if we had been content to think of them all as just good schools as indeed most of them are." Even then, 14 years after the school's formation, he felt obliged to outline just what it did stand for. "There has been some misunderstanding about what technical high schools do. The word technical in our name means that we are additionally equipped to give girls who wish to have it tuition in commercial subjects and boys who have no aptitude for a second language additional craftwork." He advised parents: "You need not fear, therefore, that if your boy or girl comes to us he or she will be thrust into an excessive amount of craftwork or commercial training. These things are there for students who need them and wish to have them. Otherwise the programme is good straight forward general education." That year, incidentally, saw the first woman guest at the Speech Day - Miss E. L. Madge, principal of North Riding Training College.

Besides the matter of its significance, the name, Technical High School, had an inbuilt confusion factor. Many people shortened it to "The Tech.". But this was also the familiar title of the College of Technology (which is today the Nene College, Avenue Campus - confusing is it not?) and, confusion was inevitable, especially during the sharing of buildings. Even after the T.H.S. had moved out into Trinity Avenue uncertainty continued and the mail would sometimes arrive at the wrong school. 

Even teachers were misled by the name, judging by the claim of Councillor Kenneth Pearson when pleading for a change. Many first-rate teachers did not apply for posts there, he told Northampton Town Council, because they were put off by the word technical. 

Just what was the role of the "Technical High School"? In making a decision to build a new home for the school the Education Committee said that it was influenced by the Percy Report which placed emphasis on the need for the fullest possible application of science in industry, by the necessity of counteracting the defection of many of the best pupils into non-industrial occupations, and because of the variety of industries growing up in Northampton. Another reason was that the College of Technology was bursting at the seams and needed the whole of its premises: for this - reason part of the £227,000 needed to build the new school came from a Further Education appropriation. 

The Minister of Education himself elaborated on the school's role when he officially opened it on February 28, 1958. Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd asked. "Have we been adapting ourselves fast enough to meet the changing and more scientific character of the world and particularly of industry? It is most pleasing this afternoon to be in this magnificent new school, which is a most practical form of answer to this criticism. I think it is true to say that this school is really a modern form of grammar school. In the 19th century there were strong arts and classical components in grammar school training but scientific studies are also very good for intellectual discipline." 

The Minister was perhaps a little premature when he praised Northampton's approach, with "no rush for any particular form or nostrum or educational fad." 

The school was among 1,136 new secondary schools built since the war. Along with 2,644 new primary establishments over two million new school places had been provided. The names of the then Borough Education Committee (education was still in borough control then, of course) will bring back memories to many readers. It included such varied personalities, with such diverse views, as Dr. E. E. (Gus) Field, Mr. J. L. (Len) Piggott, Councillor Bernard Tippleston and Alderman Len Smith. All these have now passed on, as has also the then Borough Education Officer, Mr. H. A. Skerrett. 

If the T. H. S. was indeed a "modern form of grammar school" why not call it as such? But to do so might upset some of the Old Boys of Northampton Grammar School, with its 400 years of tradition. To call the upstart academy in Trinity Avenue by the same name would be an insult to the Billing Road establishment. And certain Old Boys on Northampton Town Council and its education committee were determined that this should not occur. A notable exception to this was Sidney Clayson, one of the councillors who was not only an old boy of the Grammar School but also a governor and who spoke in a Town Council debate on the school's name in January, 1961, favouring the adoption of "Trinity Grammar School" and insisting that the traditions of the older school would not be affected. 

The question of changing the name came to a head in 1960. When the Governors first discussed the matter they decided, surprisingly, on no change, but had second thoughts after some discussion on the subject in the education committee, and recommended that the name be altered to Trinity Grammar School. Councillor F. Tollitt, chairman of the Governors, said that the original name of "Technical High School" was a misnomer and did not help to eliminate confusion. 

But they were overruled by the Town Council who in December, 1960, substituted "Trinity High School" a name which the compromising Councillor T. S. Kinch had observed was "pleasant sounding" and would prevent a "head-on clash with the town's grammarians". Mind you he thought it was an insult to override the governors' choice, and added that of all the misnomers of education the word "Governor" was the most misleading as they had powers to do very little except see that the right type of cane was employed. 

One of the opponents of the use of the grammar title was the man who had laid the Trinity Avenue school's foundation stone in March, 1954, Alderman Arthur Chown, who, as education committee chairman, was quite blunt in his opinion - "it is rather ridiculous to say that it is a grammar school". 

The reader might by now be asking himself questions about roses smelling as sweet and what's in a name anyway but the deep significance of the matter was amply demonstrated when two fathers so strongly objected to sending their sons to the school that they kept them away altogether and became involved in a head-on and widely reported collision with the authorities. In 1962 a father who had opted for his son to be sent to Billing Road and objected to him going instead to Trinity Avenue took strike action and kept the bay at home for months. Confident, no doubt, that their decision would be upheld the local authority appealed to the Minister, who, however ruled otherwise and to Northampton Grammar School the lad went. The following year another father tried the same form of opposition but this time the Minister ruled against the parental choice. 

The incidents prompted the head boy of Trinity High School, Peter York of King Edward Road, to write to the Press criticising this waste of the boys' school time and infighting over "differences between two practically equal schools." Trinity, he declared, was a school which "any boy would be proud to attend." 

Ex-pupils joined in the debate. From Leeds University, Courtney Finn, secretary of the university's Technical High School Old Students' Association, claimed that the school, which "is of grammar school status although it has no feudal roots", had a range of subjects which was the best in the town. 

But equality means different things to different people. April, 1969, the month when Trinity finally got the right to call itself a "grammar" also saw the rejection of a plea that it should get an intake of pupils of equal ability to Northampton Grammar School. The matter was raised by Alderman F. Tollit, chairman of the governors, who said that renaming the school brought it parity in name only. "I want to see parity in practice" he said. "The Grammar School has been taking the cream of the pupils and leaving the rest for Trinity". 

But discussion on these lines was becoming somewhat academic. The Grammar system was itself already doomed. Replying to Alderman Tollit, Councillor David A. Walmsley, chairman of the education committee, pointed out that this was to be the last year of selection at 11-plus if the interim scheme for secondary reorganisation was to be adopted. Which it was. 

When the Mercury and Herald ran a feature on Trinity that year its headline was "The youngest Grammar School." One small point it mentioned was that stiletto heels were banned for functions in the school hall - a flashback to the pre-clumpy days. 

But if there were those who had tried to depress Trinity below the 400-year-old grammar school it should be remembered that further down the ladder in those days were the secondary modems and in July, 1961, Mr. Howard had gone along to one of these, at Duston, to present sports prizes. He said he was pleased to see that secondary modems were now taking the G.C.E., a move which he suggested would "take a lot of the sting out of the 11-plus and end much of the criticism of it." There was also the system of transferring pupils who were successful in the G.C.E. to the Sixth Form at Trinity and at the time he had 10 ex-secondary-moderns in the Sixth Form. A few years later he was able to report considerable successes by those transferred, a number of whom went on to teacher training and to university. 

From time to time the school had its disciplinary problems some of which reached the local newspaper, as in November, 1960, when a warning appeared on the notice board that caning would be imposed for spooning, sky-larking or fighting' on the pavement. When addressing teachers pupils were to stand straight and say Sir. In March, 1970, the head sent 14 boys and girls home just before term end "to cool off." 

There were also a few cases of damage to the premises as in December, 1967, when caretaker Eric Gosling, of 140 Balfour Road, found that vandals had flooded a school workshop, and in November, 1970, when a blaze wrecked the school's wooden sports pavilion, built five years earlier. 

The school also suffered from the universal syndrome of pupils over-indulging in TV and the head coined a phrase in his 1962 Speech day report when he said that an Englishman's home was now not only his castle but also his cinema. 

But, as the school scrapbook recalls, it is not only for controversial reasons that the school has made the headlines. There have been many stories about ex-students who have done well in various spheres or entered exciting careers. And there have been repeated accounts of the school's prowess at debating, boxing, and raising money for charities. 

In 1958 the first of a series of triangular inter-school boxing contests was held between the school and Campbell Square and Spencer secondary modern schools, for a cup presented by Mr. Ray Travis. It was as a result of this that the Northamptonshire Schools Amateur Boxing Association was formed. 

Another inter-school fixture resulting from someone being kind enough to donate a cup was a debating contest between the school and Northampton Grammar School and Notre Dame High School. The pot was given by Mr. Geoffrey Crofts, a former member of Northampton Debating Society. 

During the pre-comprehensive era internal rivalry was maintained by the old system of "houses" those at Trinity being named Blakeman (after John Blakeman, former Principal of the College of Technology), Mobbs, Kelvin and Burghley. In boxing there was an inter-house cup given by Mr. D. R. Baker, then Chief Constable of Northampton, whose children have attended the school. 

Pupils seem to have done more than most for good causes, such as raising £250 for the N.S.P.C.C., which head boy Michael Daly and head girl Carol Isaacs went to London to present to Princess Margaret, in 1967; giving £250 to train a guide dog for the blind in 1966; £437 for an infant respirator at Northampton General Hospital in 1969; and purchasing an osteotomy saw for Manfield Hospital in 1971. Perhaps most unusual was buying a 60-year-old governess trap for the Princess Marina Hospital in 1971. The trap, which had been restored by Mr. H. Burt, of Pattishall, was to be drawn by National Coal Board pit ponies already owned by the hospital at Upton. 

Drama has been a strong point with productions varying from "The Ghost Train" to "The Travails of Sancho Panza" and including Gilbert and Sullivan and "Penny for a Song", the unusual play by the late Northampton-born playwright John Whiting.

Note:  There are five further paragraphs in this article, but they are unreadable on the copy that I have.  

To Read the second article [click here]