This article is about Allhallows College, formerly Allhallows School, in England. For All Hallows College in Ireland, see All Hallows College. For All Hallows' School in Australia, see All Hallows' School.
Public school in Rousdon, Lyme Regis, Devon, England
Allhallows College, previously known as Allhallows School, was a British public school for boys in Devon, in the west of England. Predominantly a boarding school, but with some day boys, it was founded in Honiton about 1515, moved to a new home at Rousdon in the 1930s, and was closed in 1998, after a fall in the number of boys had led to a financial crisis.
Although Lyme Regis is in Dorset, the new school site was over the county boundary in Devon. However, the postal address was "Near Lyme Regis, Dorset", which has led to confusion.
History
The school was founded about 1515 in Honiton, probably as a chantry school where priests taught boys to read Latin so that they could sing in the choir. Later still it became a grammar school for the sons of the local gentry. Its origins in Honiton are the reason former pupils are still known as Old Honitonians, or OHs. The school was named after its neighbour All Hallows, a roadside chapel for travellers built sometime before 1327 and now the oldest existing secular building in Honiton.
By the 1930s there was an increase in traffic through Honiton, which lay on the main route to Cornwall, which became a serious hazard to the school, with premises on both sides of the main road. The headmaster of the day, George Shallow, found a new site in the shape of a large Victoriancountry house with over 350 acres of land on the coast at Rousdon, a few miles to the West of Lyme Regis. This stood on the cliffs of what was later called the Jurassic Coast, now a World Heritage Site. The house had been built in the 1870s for Sir Henry Peek, 1st Baronet, by the architect Sir Ernest George, who also built Southwark Bridge in London. (Among Sir Ernest's pupils was the even more famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens). In 1870, Sir Henry purchased the village of Rousdon, rebuilt the church and built the village school. He then commissioned Ernest George to design a mansion to take advantage of the superb position 152.4m/500 feet above the sea. Being a distance from the nearest town, the house had to be self-sufficient with laundry, coach houses, harness rooms, wine cellars, bowling alley, rifle range, china stores, bake houses, larders, museum, observatory, walled garden, tennis courts, farm buildings and numerous cottages to house the estate population, which at the end of the 19th Century extended to about 600.
Sir Henry Peek was a governor of Holloway prison, and many of the floors were inlaid with mosaics created by the inmates. Sir Henry's famous collection of stuffed birds reputedly had an example of every bird to have landed on the British Isles. The building was a few hundred yards from the cliff-edge overlooking the massive landslip from 1839 and had extensive grounds, even if the location was remote. Inevitably not all the necessary facilities were there and though improvement work started this was brought to a halt by the Second World War. The school was not to acquire a proper gymnasium, swimming pool or cricket pavilion until some years after the war.
In the two decades after the Second World War the school gained a national reputation in shooting, attending Bisley on a regular basis and winning the inter-schools Ashburton trophy several times. This was thanks to the work of James Turner who had been a pupil at the school and then after university joined the staff as chemistry master. During the war he had worked on ballistics and he used this knowledge to train a series of first-class shots. He stayed with the school all his life, ending up with a short spell in the headmaster's chair, and then in retirement raising funds. He was one of several masters who devoted their lives to the school including G. S. Napier ('Nap') who spent over a hundred terms there after the First World War.
Around 1970 the school became one of the first public schools to admit girls and it prospered into the 1980s. However, in the 1990s it went into a decline, with the number of pupils decreasing significantly, from almost 300 to fewer than half that number. One reason for this may have been the school's remote location, at a time when parents expected to see a lot more of their children than had been traditional in the old public school era.
Closure
The school ran into financial difficulty in 1994. A group of Old Honitonians put together a plan and secured some financial backing to attempt a rescue. A new entity, Allhallows College, was established as a company limited by guarantee and registered as a charity. The recession of the early 1990s proved severe, and several West Country schools were closed; the same fate befell Allhallows College despite the efforts of staff and the board of directors. The college was closed at the end of Autumn term 1998. There is continuing controversy among Old Honitonians as to whether the closure was the best decision for the school or necessary.
Axminster is a market town and civil parish on the eastern border of the county of Devon in England. It is 28 miles (45 km) from the county town of Exeter. The town is built on a hill overlooking the River Axe which heads towards the English Channel at Axmouth, and is in the East Devon local government district. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 5,626, increasing to 5,761 at the 2011 census. The town contains two electoral wards whose combined population is 7,110. The market is still held every Thursday.
Lyme Regis is a town in west Dorset, England, 25 miles (40 km) west of Dorchester and east of Exeter. Sometimes dubbed the "Pearl of Dorset", it lies by the English Channel at the Dorset–Devon border. It has noted fossils in cliffs and beaches on the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site and heritage coast. The harbour wall, known as The Cobb, appears in Jane Austen's novel Persuasion, the John Fowles novel The French Lieutenant's Woman and the 1981 film of that name, partly shot in the town.
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Sir Ernest George was a British architect, landscape and architectural watercolourist, and etcher.
Rousdon is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Combpyne Rousdon, in the East Devon district, in the county of Devon, England. It is off the A3052 road between Colyford and Lyme Regis in Dorset. In 1931 the parish had a population of 41. On 1 April 1939 the parish was abolished to form "Combpyne Rousdon".
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The Woodroffe School is a comprehensive school in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England.
Durnford School was an English preparatory school for boys which opened in 1894 on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.
Julius Charles Drewe was an English businessman, retailer and entrepreneur who founded Home and Colonial Stores, and who ordered the building of Castle Drogo in Devon.
Sir Walter Erle or Earle was an English landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1614 and 1648. He was a vigorous opponent of King Charles I in the Parliamentary cause both before and during the English Civil War.
John Poulett, 1st Baron Poulett, of Hinton St George, Somerset, was an English sailor and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1610 and 1621 and was later raised to the peerage.
Henry Henley (1612–1696) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1653 and 1681. He supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War.
William Pole (1515–1587), Esquire, was a lawyer and speculator in church lands following the Dissolution of the Monasteries who served as MP for Lyme Regis in 1545, Bridport in 1553 and for West Looe in 1559. He acquired lands in East Devon and was the founder of the influential and wealthy Pole family of Shute, Devon. He was the father of the famous Sir William Pole (1561-1635), the antiquary, historian of Devon.
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