King Edward's School (KES) is an independent day school for boys in the British public school tradition, located in Edgbaston, Birmingham. Founded by King Edward VI in 1552, it is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference.
It shares its site and is twinned with King Edward VI High School for Girls (KEHS). While the two schools are managed separately, dramatic arts, societies, music and other events are often shared; the schools also share a couple of hockey pitches and several clubs. The shared area is called Winterbourne after the nearby Winterbourne Botanic Garden.
Alumni of the school include two Nobel laureates, as well as J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, and Field Marshal William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, British military commander in Burma during the Second World War.
History
The Foundation was created on 2 January 1552 by Royal Charter of King Edward VI together with £20 per annum returned by the Crown for educational purposes. Five years earlier, in 1547, the Act of Suppression, part of the wider Dissolution of the Monasteries, provided for the confiscation of all assets of religious guilds except an amount of land with an annual income of £21 (two thirds of the original lands) if the guild supported a school. The Guild of the Holy Cross in Birmingham had no school, but persuaded the Earl of Northumberland (also the lord of the manor of Birmingham) to release the land for the creation of a school. The charter of the "free Grammer Schole" of King Edward VI was issued on 2 January 1552, and the school came into being in the former guild building on New Street. By the 1680s there were "neer 200" boys in the school and a Petty School (a feeder school) had been established by the foundation.
The affairs of the school in the early part of the 18th century were dominated by a quarrel between a governor and the headmaster, but this notwithstanding, a new Georgian-inspired building was built on the New Street site between 1731 and 1734. In the latter part of the 18th Century four separate elementary schools and a girls' school were set up by the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI. The school remained relatively stagnant after this until Francis Jeune was appointed Headmaster in 1835. He erected a new building on the same site, in the Gothic Revival style of architecture. This was designed by Charles Barry, who employed Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin for aspects of the interior design, generally held to be Big School and, less certainly, the decorative battlements. (Barry, again employing Pugin, subsequently designed the present Palace of Westminster). From within this new landmark building came several changes in the curriculum and ethos of the school. Sports became an important feature, through games afternoons, and the dominance of Classics was lessened by the introduction of mathematics and science.
A new site and Second World War
By 1936 the old building on New Street had become a fire risk, and soot from the nearby train station was also an issue. The school also did not have any nearby space for sports, and had to travel to the playing fields near the present-day school. As a result, plans were made by the Governors and the then Headmaster, Edwin Thirlwall England, to move to a new site at Edgbaston Park Road/Bristol Road, in Edgbaston, along with the girls' school. At the time this new site was in the countryside, along with the nearby university.
Ironically, the temporary buildings erected on South Field of the new site in 1936 burnt down. The school was forced to move, if only for a short time, to the University of Birmingham's Great Hall and surrounding buildings until new temporary buildings could be erected. The move was complicated by the outbreak of the Second World War, and the subsequent evacuation of the pupils to Repton School for a short period.