The Rookery Preparatory School, Dunstan Road
The Rookery Preparatory School was based at The Rookery (now Ruskin Hall) in Dunstan Road from c.1859 to 1897, under the headship of two Masters.
Rookery School under the headship of the Revd J. W. A. Taylor from c.1859 to 1883
John William Augustus Taylor (1818–1886) had been awarded his B.A. at Cambridge in 1840, the same year that he married his wife Jane Mould. He was ordained as a Deacon and served as Curate of Framfield, Sussex from 1845 to 1846. He was then the theological tutor at Cheltenham College from 1848 to 1852, being ordained at Gloucester as a priest on 26 May 1850. From 1852 until 1858 he was head of Portswood Preparatory School in Malvern. On 20 October 1859 he was admitted ad eundem to the University of Oxford, having bought the large mansion in Headington known as the Rookery as well as its extensive lands on the south side of the London Road from the Finch family. He moved in with his wife Jane and their first four children, and it was probably also in 1859 that he started up this boarding school in his home.
The April 1861 census lists just a housekeeper and four servants in residence at the Rookery. One of these servants is described as a “Pupils’ Maid”, and a directory for that year lists the Rookery as being occupied by the Revd Taylor’s “Boys’ Boarding School”. In other directories, his school variously described as a “preparatory school for Eton and Harrow” and a “school for young noblemen”.
The Revd Taylor's youngest son Arthur was born at The Rookery on 12 January 1864. The 1871 census shows Taylor and his wife Jane living in the Rookery with two of their children, Sarah (27) and Arthur Mould Chapman (7), plus two nieces in their twenties and a housekeeper, butler, cook, nurse, and four housemaids. Boarding with them at the Rookery were the following 23 schoolboys aged between 9 and 14; their place of birth (given in brackets) shows that they came from far and wide, and there were no local boys.
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Hercules Porteus (Scotland) |
Alfred Kenyon (Shropshire) |
Right: This extract from the 1876 map of Headington shows the Rookery School's playground to the north-west clearly marked. It seems likely that the school was housed at in the wing at the north of the house
The playground area can still be seen in 1900 on this map, but the current Biko Building (originally named the Cyril Plant Building when it opened in 1976) now occupies this area
The Revd Taylor's wife Jane died in April 1877, and the census of 3 April 1881 shows him as a widower, living at the school with his children Sarah and Arthur as before, and five servants (an indoor male domestic servant, a cook, two housemaids, and a kitchenmaid). There were nine pupils in residence:
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Henry Robert
Reid Robertson Cunningham
(Scotland) |
The Revd Taylor, who had been selling off his extensive lands on the south side of the London Road for the development of the Highfield estate since the 1870s, evidently decided to retire at the end of the school year 1881/2, as on 12 August 1882 the following advertisement appeared in Jackson's Oxford Journal:
FOR SALE, — The FREEHOLD MANSION and GROUNDS called “THE ROOKERY,” at HEADINGTON, three minutes' walk from the Parish Church, lately restored, and two miles from Oxford. The House contains several reception rooms, seventeen bed rooms, and a handsome building attached, suitable for ball room, billiard room, or school room; there are large and convenient cellars, out-offices, coach-house, and stables. The lawns are well shaded by old trees, and the gardens are abundantly stocked. Sloping from the gardens are about twenty acres of rich pasture; the prospects are beautiful, the water is pure and abundant, and the air peculiarly healthy and bracing. The level is one hundred and thirty feet above the river. It is well adapted for a Private Residence, Ladies' College, or Public Establishment of any kind.
In 1883 the Revd Taylor retired to Stoke House. on the other side of Stoke Place.
Rookery School under the headship of W. S. Gibson from 1883 to 1897
Walter Sumner Gibson (1849–1918), who bought The Rookery from the Revd Taylor, was a graduate of Balliol College and had been an assistant schoolmaster for nine years at Charterhouse School in Godalming. On 2 January 1884, soon after taking over the prep school at The Rookery. he married Julia Elizabeth Olivier, and the couple lived at the school and their six children were all born there.
Gibson appears to have done most of the administration himself: this postcard shows him putting in an order of ink for the school in 1885.
The following advertisement appeared in the The Times on 27 December 1888
Preparation for Public Schools. – W. S. GIBSON, Esq., Oxford Graduate (first-class classical honours and prizeman, nine years assistant master at Charterhouse) assisted by C.B. Philpott, Esq., Oxford Graduate. Individual teaching. Special attention to delicate boys. High and bracing situation. Cricket and football fields, gymnasium. Terms moderate and inclusive. – The Rookery, Headington, near Oxford.
An almost identical advertisement appeared in the Morning Post of 9 April 1889, but this time the headline stated that there were only a limited number of places.
The 1891 census shows that the Gibsons had six servants at the Rookery (a nurse, parlourmaid, cook, nursery maid, and two housemaids).
The following advertisement appeared in the Morning Post of 19 July 1892:
SMALL PREPARATORY SCHOOL, on high ground; individual attention; home comforts and medical testimonial to the healthiness of school and excellence of sanitary arrangements; terms moderate; reduction for sons of clergy.—Address W, S. Gibson, Esq., The Rookery, Headington, near Oxford.
The photograph below, taken by Jabez Sumner of 110 St Aldate's, Oxford in c.1896, shows Walter Sumner Gibson and his wife holding three of their children (probably Mabel, Cuthbert, and Frank, born respectively in 1889, 1891, and 1893) surrounded by ten boy boarders. The boarder on the left of the front row is Wynyard Keith Brown (born 1887): he went on to Haileybury and was killed at Gallipoli); his older brother Eric Carmichael Brown (born 1885) is the boy wearing a boater on the left behind him: he went on to Rugby School and then joined the army.
The next photograph, taken by the same photographer, again shows the Gibson family with some of their pupils:
Back row, standing: Eric Carmichael Brown; Fowle; Ken Gibson (likely to be a relation);
Durst; and Unknown
Middle row, seated : Mr Gibson; Arthur Gibson (b.1887); Mrs Gibson holding baby
Frank Gibson (b. Feb 1893); Cuthbert Gibson (b. 1890); and Hereford
Front row: Scott-Tucker (probably John, the eldest son of the Vicar of Headington, b.1885);
Utterton; Mabel Gibson (b.1889); and Harry Gibson (b.1885)
Eric Carmichael Brown (1885–1983) was a pupil at the Rookery School from about 1894 until its closure in 1897, and his letters home to his parents in Tiverton reveal that the Master, Mr Gibson, was approachable and kindly and even appeared not to mind being pelted by snowballs. The letters include the following details about the school:
- The curriculum included acting and art with Mrs Gibson, and they went swimming
- The boys played cricket matches against the choir of St Andrew's Church
- Eric had Arithmetic lessons with Mr Francis, a National School master, for two hours a week and was given another hour's work to complete on his own
- The boys were taken down to the river to see the races in Eights week, and attended a cricket match held at the Christ Church ground, Oxford on 15 May 1884 where the Australians beat the University of Oxford
- In February 1886 there was smallpox in Oxford, and the boys were confined to Headington to prevent them from being affected
On 28 October 1897 an advertisement appeared in the Morning Post advertising that The Rookery was for sale as a private residence.
After the closure of the school in 1897
After Walter Sumner Gibson sold the Rookery in 1897, the whole building reverted to being a private house until 1946, when Ruskin College took it over as an annexe to their main college in Walton Street, renaming it Ruskin Hall. The whole college moved up to the former Rookery in 2012 after building an enormous extension to the east.
Gibon went to work as a schoolmaster in London. He moved back to Oxford in 1914 when he was appointed an academic reader of Oxford University Press. His eldest son Harry was killed in action in the First World War in 1917 and even though the Gibsons were then living at 9 Lathbury Road in north Oxford, St Andrew's Church in Headington remembered him on their war memorial, and there is more information about Harry and his parents here.
