History
St Swithun's was founded as "Winchester High School" by Miss Anna Bramston, daughter of John Bramston, the then Dean of Winchester, with the ambition of educating "daughters of worthy citizens of Winchester". Not having sufficient money of her own, funds were raised by subscription. It opened on 5 May 1884 with seventeen pupils. Pupil numbers soon grew and the school began taking in boarders as well. In 1909 the school rented ten acres on Magdalen Hill for sports. The school’s name was changed to Winchester Girls’ School and then, after World War I, to St Swithun’s School: the recorded virtues of this saint – Caritas, Humilitas, Sinceritas – were adopted as the school’s motto in 1928.
St Swithun's moved to its present location overlooking the Hampshire Downs on the edge of Winchester in 1931. Princess Mary the Princess Royal opened the new buildings formally in 1932, but the outbreak of World War II saw the school turned into a hospital and by 1942 St Swithun’s became an American casualty clearing station. The school celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1959 with the Duke of Gloucester as a special guest.
Today, St Swithun's includes both junior and senior schools meaning pupils can attend from nursery all to way to sixth form level. Boys may attend up to age 7.
St Swithun's retains a strong Anglican tradition through its links with Winchester Cathedral. It holds six services there every year and the girls' choir sings at the cathedral.
Read more about this topic: St Swithun's School, Winchester
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)