The Abingdon Foundation, Park Road, Abingdon, Oxford OX14 1DE 01235 521563 • Edited by Julia Cooke – [email protected] 01235 849123 • Design – [email protected] Abingdon Out of the Past @abingdonschool @abingdonschool @abingdon_school linkedin.com/school/abingdonschool That Abingdon should educate boys as young as 4 was new but for centuries it had educated boys from the age of 6, the age Sir Henry Atkins was on the 1732 school roll. In 1785, the Speech Day programme records that James Kennedy was 7 when he stood up at the Visitation to recite from memory and in Latin Gaius Cotta’s speech To the People of Rome. By 1870 when the school moved to Albert Park the entry age had risen to 8, where it remained until 1947 when the pressure of growing numbers in the senior school forced the closure of the ‘infant’ department. Then, after a gap of 50 years, the merger with Josca’s allowed the tradition to continue. By that time Josca’s had become one of Abingdon’s principal feeder schools regularly sending more than 50% of its Common Entrance pupils to Abingdon every year. The Foundation may be celebrating its 25th Anniversary this year but the prep school is more than twice as old as this. It began life in 1956 in a house in Jack Straw’s Lane, Oxford with five pupils, one of whom was nicknamed Josca. Later that same year it moved to 5 Latimer Road, Oxford. The following year Tony Savin joined the staff. By this time there were 90 pupils. In 1970 the lease on no. 5 expired and this could have been the end of the school. However, Savin, now headmaster, managed to purchase Frilford House and move 60 of the pupils there in 1970. Savin retired in 1999 a year after the merger with Abingdon. In 2007, Josca’s was renamed Abingdon Preparatory School. The Abingdon Foundation now numbers 1,286 pupils. Abingdon School in 1870, the youngest boy is 8 1998 – a New Foundation Twenty-five years ago, Abingdon School merged with Josca’s, a flourishing preparatory school in Frilford, to form a new foundation educating boys from 4 to 18. Revd Dr John Lemprière The School has recently acquired a portrait of one of its most illustrious eighteenth-century headmasters, the Revd Dr John Lemprière headmaster of Abingdon 1792-1809. Lemprière’s reputation in the academic world is based on the Classical Dictionary he compiled. Published in 1788 it is still in print today. His reputation at Abingdon is more ambivalent. Described by one historian of the School as ‘the prince of litigants’, he held several livings in contravention of the ordinances, and he happily flouted the requirement to educate charity boys from the town much preferring his fee-paying pupils. The portrait comes to us on permanent loan from Pembroke College, Oxford where Lemprière was an undergraduate in the 1780s. John Lemprière 1765-1824, Artist unknown. Tony Savin, Headmaster of Josca’s 1963-1999 Frilford House, now known as Josca’s House. To mark the new foundation, the School commissioned a coat of arms from the College of Arms. The crest combines Josca’s unicorn and Abingdon’s griffen. The Infant Class, 1732 School Roll. As thought befitting of his station in life, Sir Henry’s name is written in large black letters.
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