Please click the Play button to listen to a brief audio clip about the history of Appleby Grammar School.
A Transcript is also available further down the page.
Historical Images of The Grammar School
Audio Transcript
The current Appleby Grammar School on Battlebarrow was built in 1887 from grey and red stone and has a slate roof with red tile cresting. The doorway, which is dated 1671, was re-used from the original grammar school building on Chapel Street. There was also a house for the schoolmaster to live in. It remained a boys only school, for either boarders or day students, as it had been on Chapel Street. The school library was originally the assembly hall of the Victorian rebuild, and it houses many mementos of the old school.
The brothers of former American president George Washington were boarders at Appleby Grammar School, as was their father, Augustine Washington. After he died in 1743, George’s mother Mary remarried and George stayed in Virginia, never making it to Appleby. George Washington was elected first president of the United States in 1789.
Another alumnus, James Whitehead, went on to become Lord Mayor of London in 1888-1889, and was made a Baronet in 1889. He endowed a science laboratory at the Grammar School, which opened in 1924 and still commemorates his name. The four sports teams at the Grammar School are still named Whiteheads, Threlkelds, Hastings and Yates.
The Grammar School underwent a large transformation after the second world war. The Education Act of 1944 required provision of secondary education, but in the Eden Valley, there were only two secondary schools – Appleby Grammar School, a boy only establishment, and Kirkby Stephen Grammar School, a girl only establishment. Although both schools retained their names of ‘grammar’ schools, they became co-educational and remain so today. The gates of the school were built by Old Applebians in 1955 to commemorate those killed in the two World Wars.
About the Speaker: Dot Anderton
Dot Anderton has been an Appleby Town Councillor for 18 years and was Deputy Mayor for a year, before serving as Mayor for three years from 2010-2012. She is also an Academy and Foundation Governor for Appleby Grammar School and a member of Appleby Community Acting Together, working hard to fundraise for the annual Christmas Lights.