Celebration of the School's 450th Anniversary:
Oundle 450
Reflections on the past, visions of the future.
Oundle 450th Anniversary products now available to order
2006 marks the 450th Anniversary of the founding of Sir William Laxton’s Free Grammar School, which evolved to become Oundle School. Sir William Laxton was a local boy who went to London to seek his fortune, became Master of the Grocers’ Company and Lord Mayor of London and, on his deathbed, remembered his humble origins.
In the early twentieth century, when Frederick Sanderson was headmaster, Oundle was noted for its liberal and progressive ideas; pupils were encouraged to learn a foreign language and creative research work was accorded the highest priority, Sanderson’s view being that “no creative work can be subjected to the devastating attack of the red ink or the blue pencil.” Oundelians left their school encouraged by their headmaster to improve society.
In Oundle’s history echoes of the Dick Whittington fairy-tale are found alongside socialist idealism and factory-owning capitalism. But above all Oundle is a school that looks to the future: 2006 will see the first steps in the construction of SciTec, a continuation of that tradition of scientific exploration and creativity which was the hallmark of the Sanderson era.
‘Reflections on the past, visions of the future’ declares that in 2006 we shall celebrate 450 years of Oundle’s development and achievement through a diary of events and through a number of initiatives reaffirming some of the major characteristics of an Oundle education.