From the Archive
Crypt School Room
Crypt School Room
1539
The picture shows the new schoolroom, next to St Mary de Crypt Church, where local children were educated in Latin and Greek. The School remained located in the schoolroom until the 1860s when, due to increasing numbers of pupils, the school moved to a temporary second site in 1861.
John and Joan Cooke
John and Joan Cooke
1539
The portrait depicts the School’s founders, John and Joan Cooke. John Cooke was an important and wealthy local man, having been Mayor of the City of Gloucester. In his will he set aside monies to endow a new free school for the education in grammar of local children. It was however left for Joan, his wife, to actually establish the school and she did so in 1539. The new Crypt School was located in its own school room next to St Mary de Crypt Church in the centre of Gloucester. The school room, where the first ever Cryptians were educated, is still there today and is used by the School for events such as the annual carol service and Year 7 commendation day.
Friars Orchard
Friars Orchard
1889
In 1889 The Crypt moved into a third set of purpose-built buildings on the site known to generations of Old Cryptians as “Friars Orchard”. This site was the orchard of the medieval Franciscan Friary of the Grey Friars and had survived as unbuilt land from medieval times. 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 years of the Second World War.
William Ernest Henley
William Ernest Henley
1875
Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. Henley is one of the School’s most famous alumni. In 1875 Henley wrote his most famous poem Invictus whilst recuperating in hospital at the age of 17 following the amputation of his leg. Invictus inspired Nelson Mandela during his long incarceration on Robin Island and more recently Prince Harry to set up the Invictus games.
Foundation Stone
Foundation Stone
1939
In 1939 the highlight of the School’s Quatercentenary was the 4th July laying of the foundation stone of the fourth new site of the School. The foundation stone, of Cotswold stone from Painswick, was laid by H.R.H The Duchess of Gloucester.
WW1 memorial
WW1 memorial
1930
These two important memorial plaques were installed into the School’s Crush Hall to commemorate the 136 Old Cryptians who died in the two world wars of the twentieth century. Each year in November, the School gathers together to honour the memory of these and other OC’s who have lost their lives in the service of their country. The youngest pupil in the School, together with the Head Boy or Girl, each lay a wreath of remembrance on behalf of the whole Crypt School community on the two remembrance memorials. The annual remembrance service, together with the memorial plaques reminds us all of the huge debt we owe to our former students who made the ultimate sacrifice in the defence of their country and its values of freedom and democracy.
John Moore
John Moore
1774
John Moore was educated at The Crypt and in 1774 won a prestigious scholarship to Pembroke College Oxford. He became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1783.
Admissions of Girls
Admissions of Girls
2018
In 1987 the first three girls joined the sixth form, marking a change in the education of the School’s senior students. However, it wasn’t until September 2018 that the School admitted its first cohort of boys and girls into Year 7, marking the move to the School becoming fully co-educational throughout. Today, The Crypt School is Gloucester’s only co-educational selective school.
Podsmead
Podsmead
1943
It was in 1943 that the Crypt moved to its current site at Podsmead, just outside of the City centre. The School was built on land that had, with incredible foresight, been purchased by Joan Cooke at the time of the School’s founding in 1539.