The College of Richard Collyer

The College of Richard Collyer, formerly called Collyer's School, is a co-educational sixth form college in Horsham, West Sussex, England.
Students have achieved exam results which enabled a number to progress to universities. The college is rated as being ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, and is the only further education college in the county to have achieved this.
It is also the second oldest school in West Sussex after The Prebendal School in Chichester and the fourth oldest school in Sussex. The college is Grade II listed by English Heritage.

Admissions

Collyer's serves about 1600 students between 16 and 19 years of age. It offers AS and A-level courses in 45 different subjects, including a selection not taught at other local colleges. 20 further subjects are offered towards AVCE, BTEC, GNVQ and vocational certifications and GCSE examinations.
A wide variety of adult education classes are offered at Collyer's in the evenings. It is on the B2180 opposite Horsham Community Hospital, and close to the fire and police stations.

History

The College was founded in 1532 in the will of Richard Collyer, who was born in Horsham, and became a wealthy member of The Mercers’ Company of the City of London. The Mercers’ Company are still the school's trustees, and maintain a close relationship with the school. Collyer willed that one of his houses in the City, variously called ‘The Sonne’ or ‘The Sunne’, be sold and the proceeds used to build a school-house in Horsham for “italic=no”.
Under the terms of the will the money was not freed until 1540, and the new school was eventually opened in the early summer of 1541. The education granted to those sixty scholars, who were naturally all boys, was to be provided “freely without any money paying therefor”, with the Mercer's Company paying the masters’ salaries.
The original building was on the site of the current St Mary's Church of England Primary School, adjacent to the parish church. However, it was extended then rebuilt in 1660, in order to accommodate “neare an hundred scholars... with diligence and good success” by 1666, such that none of Collyer's original structure survives. In the eighteenth century it fell into disrepair, such that the Mercers’ Company surveyor reported that it would cost £1,040 to renovate, “but you will still have a very old and imperfect building.” Accordingly, in 1840 the second building was demolished, and a new, late-Elizabethan style structure built for the sum of £2,240.

Hurst Road Site

By the late nineteenth century, the population of Horsham had expanded to 10,000, the City and Guilds Institute decreed that education needed to be extended to include the new sciences, and money needed to be found to replace the school buildings yet again. Thus after a long campaign against fees, including a petition of 1,100 signatures, the new school charter of 1889 stated that, “Tuition fees might vary between £4 and £10 p.a. and Boarding fees were not to exceed £40 a year.” A new and larger site was sorely needed.
The present site in Hurst Road was found, and the current building was designed in 1892 by Arthur Vernon, and built by Joseph Potter for a contract price of £5,795. It is now grade II listed by English Heritage. Above the entrance is a stone engraved with, “Grammar School, Founded by Richard Collier AD 1532”. The 1892 building facing Hurst Road has been extended continually as the school has expanded. This included the addition of science laboratories in 1897, a ‘Great Hall’ in 1912, and the ‘New Block’ classrooms in 1932.
In the 1890s Collyer's taught 110 boys from ages 7 to 17, both boarders and day-schoolers, and for the first time included a sixth form to study for university entrance. From 1923 the Rev. W.M. Peacock started to model the school on public school lines, introducing four houses, The Horsham Grammar School Magazine, and a school song. By 1926 it was a single-stream school of 220 boys with a sixth form of “less than a dozen”, and ten teaching staff.

Grammar school

Collyer's ceased to accept boarders in 1935, and the dormitories were converted into much-needed library and common-room space. Plans for adding a gymnasium and other facilities were abandoned in 1939, when the school accepted evacuees from the Mercers’ School in London, and pupil numbers soared to over 400 in three streams. In 1944 it became a voluntary-aided grammar school, and its education was again made available free to the scholars. In the 1950s it had around 500 pupils, rising slowly to over 600 during the 1960s.
In the early 1960s when an Old Collyerian, Dr. William W. Duckering bequeathed £22,000 to the school ‘for its general purposes’. The bequest paid for a new laboratory block, gymnasium and changing rooms in 1961, and an assembly and dining hall with theatrical stage facilities, modern kitchens attached, and a ‘Small Upper Hall’ above the new foyer, all completed in 1963. The new hall was named the ‘Duckering Hall’, and the smaller hall the ‘Duckering Room’. Between 1960 and 1963 the playing fields were also extended, levelled, and new sports facilities were added. In 1964 a headmaster's house was built on the site, replacing the accommodation that was originally included in the 1892 school block.
In the 1960s the then headmaster, Douglas Coulson, left after it was found that he had regularly subjected pupils to canings, and two teachers were imprisoned for indecency. But the school recovered from this low point under its last headmaster, Derek Slynn.

Sixth form college

It started its transition to become a voluntary-aided sixth form college in 1976. The other three state secondary schools in Horsham became comprehensives. Collyer's had taken its last first form intake in the previous September, and started to expand its sixth form. Initially this was done by taking students from the two existing secondary moderns to do O-levels, and girls from Horsham High School who wanted to study A-level choices that were not offered by their previous school.
In the early 2000s, annual reports from the Office for Standards in Education have deemed the school outstanding. On the strength of a recent OFSTED Grade One for Science provision, the college was awarded ‘Beacon Status’ for Science in 2005 by the Department for Education and Skills. In the same year, it achieved the status of Centre of Vocational Excellence for sport and recreation. A new £2 million, three storey Learning Resources Centre was unveiled during this period. In 2006 work began to extend the Sports Hall, or Cowley Building, to provide more teaching and social space.

Houses

From the 1920s the students and some teaching staff in the college have been divided into a number of different houses. All houses names are associated with the history of the college or the town. The current eight houses are:

Denne – after a local area of Horsham;
Garnet – after Thomas Garnet, a saint and Jesuit priest who attended the school in the 16th century;
Hurst – after a ward covering the western side of Horsham, and also the name of the road on which the college is situated;
Mercers’ – after the Mercers' Company, a livery company based in London, a member of which founded the original school;
Pirie – After William Pirie, a previous headmaster at the college, who served for 46 years and raised standards significantly in the college. There is a small square in the town centre known as Pirie's Place, with a sculpture of Pirie in a horse-drawn cart, commemorating the achievement of the headmaster;
Richmond – After a road bordering the college;
St Leonard's – After the forest to the east of Horsham;
Whittington – After a member of the Mercer's company.

Former house names include Collyer's, Duckering and Weald.

Headmasters

The following list of the headmasters from the school's opening until 1965 was provided in the history of the school that was published in that year.

1541–1546 Richard Brokebanke
1546–1548 Nicholas Bayne
1549–1562 John Fowler
1563–1567 Thomas Hodeles
1567–1617 James Alleyn
1617–1629 Richard Nye
1629–1631 Edmund Pierson
1631–1639 Thomas Robinson
1640–1644 Rev. John Sefton
1644–1647 Rev. Thomas Smith
1647–1648 Rev. Alma Hogglebin
1648–1684 John Nisbet
1684–1685 Rev. Peregrine Peryham
1686–1699 Rev. James Wickliffe
1699 Rev. Ralph Grove
1700–1706 Rev. Alexander Hay
1706–1712 Rev. Thomas Pittis
1712 Rev. Peter Stockar
1712–1722 Rev. John Reynell
1722–1773 Rev. Francis Osgood
1773–1806 Rev. William Jameson
1806–1821 Rev. Thomas Williams
1822–1868 William Pirie
1868–1883 Richard Cragg
1883–1890 James Williams
1890–1917 Rev. Dr. George Thompson
1917–1922 William Major
1922–1926 Rev. Canon Wilfrid Peacock
1922–1956 Philip Tharp
1956–1964 Douglas Coulson
1964–1966 Vernon Davies
1966–1983 Derek Slynn
Principals

In 1976, the title was changed from Headmaster to Principal. Since then the college's principals have been:

1983–1999 David Arnold
1999–2004 Michael Marchant
2004–2014 Dr. Jacqueline Johnston
2014–2020 Sally Bromley
Academic performance

After recovering from a country-wide low point in schooling in the eighteenth century, headmasters from William Pirie to George Thompson successively raised standards, such that in 1904, when the school had 110 pupils, six OCs held open awards at Oxford or Cambridge, and another was a City and Guilds scholar. By 1962, university education also having been made free to students, the school sent 55 students out of 80 leavers into higher education.

Notable alumni