Celebrating 150 years on Compton Road in October 2025
The move to Compton Road
WGS was founded by Sir Stephen Jenyns in 1512, originally located in the city centre on John Street (known today as the Mander Centre).
In the first year on Compton Road the whole school intake was 222 boys, and included boarding students. Thomas Beach, headmaster from 1865, became the driving force behind the bold move to relocate WGS to new premises.
Our archives show a tender was issued in The Builder on 26th April 1873 seeking submissions to design a new school building for WGS. The original 1873 design for Big School can be seen in these two images. However, the preferred design was actually built in mirror image, as requested by the Board of Governors.
Leaving a mark in history
Student stained-glass window competition
To mark this significant anniversary in the school’s history, students from both the Junior & Infants and Senior School have a unique opportunity to leave their mark in history as part of our 150-year celebrations.
All students are invited to design a new stained-glass window for Big School.
The two winning designs will be unveiled on 15 October 2025, in honor of our milestone anniversary.
History of Philanthropy
WGS has a history of philanthropy, with the first “Independence Appeal” in 1979. The Independence Appeal and the Government’s Assisted Places Scheme enabled many bright students to benefit form a WGS education.
Government Assisted Places ceased in 1997; but WGS has continued to offer bursary awards with the support of our WGS community through regular donations and gifts.
There will be a series of celebration events and activities over these next two academic years for our WGS community to be involved with; including a fundraising appeal to support our key strategic priority of increasing bursary awards. So please look out for details of these over the coming months.
We hope our WGS community will join us as we collectively celebrate 150 years on Compton Road; reflecting on WGS’s history and its transition to WGS as we know it today; and supporting our vision “Transforming lives as well as minds” to continue to offer bursary awards for future generations of Wulfrunians.
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