One of Newark's most important benefactors, Thomas Magnus, built the Magnus School between 1529 and 1531.
The original building is now a part of Newark Museum. The Magnus Boys' Grammar School also known as the Thomas Magnus School on Earp Avenue was built in 1909. By the 1950s, the school had around 450 boys with 100 in the sixth form.
In 1977 a voluntary controlled comprehensive school was opened on the grounds of the Earp Avenue site. It amalgamated the boys of the Thomas Magnus School with the girls from Lilley & Stone Girls' High School, a girls' grammar school on London Road, and The Grove School, a secondary modern school. It was a co-educational 8-form entry school for ages 14–18, with 600 boys and girls, and 130 in the sixth form. In 1997 the Magdalene High School, a lower school (ages 11–14), on Barnby Road was combined with the Thomas Magnus School to form the current school. The school went into special measures in May 2008
Fives at the Magnus
The game of Fives as played at the Magnus Grammar School at Newark-on-Trent receives a number of mentions in the school literature. Writing in the school magazine, The Novarcensian (No.6, January 1900), the Rev. W.J. Humble (a former pupil of the school) had the following to say about how Fives were played during the headmastership of Herbert Plater (1854-1893):-
“Among our minor recreations was fives. In my time there were only two courts, but it was a good instance of the Master’s self-abnegation, when Oxford offered him the honour of a D.C.L. degree, that he declined it but devoted the fees, which he would have had to pay had he accepted, to the building of a third fives court upon which he had inscribed the letters D.C.L.”
In 1869 a detailed description of the school appeared in The Public School’s Chronicle (summer 1869 edition, reprinted locally in The Newark Advertiser of 9th June 1869, p8 c1) where the writer notes the existence of “a spacious yard adjoining the school a quarter of an acre in extent, and two very good open fives courts, of which the boys seemed ready to avail themselves”.
Somewhat later, another former pupil – or ‘Old Magnusian’ ― who attended the school between 1902 and 1915, remembered that “we used to play a lot of fives”, but that when “a court was built at the new school [it] was not used much”.
The New School referred to was that which is in use today on Earp Avenue, Newark, following a move from the original buildings on Appletongate in 1909.
The existence of this single fives court at the new school, and the decline in its use is confirmed in the reminiscences of a further old boy who attended the school in the 1940s:- “there was a dingy brick and concrete thing, like a roofless air-raid shelter, next to the ‘bogs’. It was called the fives court. I never found out what ‘fives’ was as nobody seemed to play it”
** The standard history of the school, Newark Magnus: The Story of a Gift by N.G. Jackson, was published in 1964 by J & H Bell Ltd of Nottingham, and is still the best source for information on the schools long and distinguished history.
The Magnus courts were Eton courts but the ledges along the side walls appear to be missing. One of the courts (presumably the gift of Herbert Plater) has plain brickwork, while the other two are plastered. In all probability the court that was clearly not being used in the 1940s was demolished sometime soon after. It certainly did not survive the conversion to a comprehensive in 1976.