Beverley Grammar School, East Yorkshire
The Rev George Pierce Richards was Headmaster of the school from 1820 to 1828. He was born in 1788, educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, graduating in 1809, in which year he was elected a Fellow of the College. George Poulson, author of The History & Antiquities of Beverley (1829), wrote, “Mr Richards, the late Master, erected in the playground, which is nearly two acres in extent, a fives court. On a tablet, let into the wall, is the following:
Ut pila missa manu spatiis agitetur in amplis
Arduus hic paries stat lapidesque jacent
Tempore quo vindex regum et sacra foedera servans
Gallia in Hispanos arma nefanda tulit
Hoc opus exactum est. maneat! nugisque relictis
Musas et ludos nostra juventa colat!
Praemia prima tenent labor et certamina mentis
Judice me detur palma secunda pilae
G.P. Richards, A.M.
Coll. reg. apud Cantab. soc. archdidascalo
T. Hull, M.D. summi magistratus officio
diligentissime obeunti
A.D. 1823
JR Witty in his History of Beverley Grammar School (published by the School in 1986), wrote, “Mr Richards was an energetic master and he has left behind many mementoes ….He also got a Fives court built in the school playground, on the wall of which was a tablet now to be seen in the present corridor, with an inscription in Latin, reading when translated:
“For the ball, struck by the hand and driven into space,
Here the wall stands upright, and here the buttresses be;
Ever since that time when the Avenger of Kings, preserving sacred treaties
Bore the accursed arms of Gaul into Spain, this game has been carried on.
May it remain! And when other amusements are forsaken
May our youth cherish the Muses and Sport.
In my judgment, work and the repletion of the mind
Holds first place, the second place falls to the ball.”
“The court, of which a plan has been preserved, was of the Eton type, rectangular in plan, about 25 ft long by 14 ft broad enclosed on three sides by brick walls. The floor was divided into the two usual courts with the pepper box buttresses in the inner court, and the various ledges or lines in the court walls.”
Beverley Grammar School, claiming to have been founded in 706 AD, has moved sites several times in its history. Early records suggest that the medieval building, which existed in the southwest corner of the Minster grounds, was demolished in 1602 and replaced on the same site by a stone building in 1609. This building fell into disrepair and the school moved to a site “adjacent to the Headmaster’s house on Keldgate” in 1816. It was on this site that the fives court described above was built. Changes in local government caused the temporary closure of the school in 1886, but makeshift accommodation was found in Grayburn Lane and the school re-opened in 1889. A new site was purchased in Queensgate in 1902 and it here that the school now is.
Unfortunately it appears that, in spite of Witty’s assertion in 1986, the plan of the court has not been preserved but he clearly knew enough about the game to classify the court as “of the Eton type”.