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[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rossall_School]
Rossall School is a British, fee paying co-educational, independent school, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St. Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College which had been founded the previous year. Its establishment was "to provide, at a moderate cost, for the sons of Clergymen and others, a classical, mathematical and general education of the highest class, and to do all things necessary, incidental, or conducive to the attainment of the above objects." Along with Cheltenham, Lancing and Marlborough, Rossall was part of a flurry of expansion in education during the early Victorian period. These schools were later complemented by others such as Clifton, Wellington, Malvern and Radley.
Set in a 161-acre (0.65 km2) estate next to Rossall Beach, Rossall is also a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and was granted a royal charter on 21 October 1890. It accepts students between the ages of 2 and 18 and also has an associated preparatory school. Rossall's campus has a large array of facilities for extracurricular activities and the school is home to the Lawrence House Space Science and Astronomy Centre, the only facility of its type in the UK. Over the years, Rossall has adapted itself to changing attitudes in education, and was the first school in the UK to have a Combined Cadet Force and one of the first to introduce the International Baccalaureate and host a dedicated international study centre on campus.
The idea of founding a boarding school on the Fylde coast originates with a Corsican man named Zenon Vantini. As the owner of the North Euston Hotel in Fleetwood, Vantini opened his hotel expecting many visitors but few people arrived. To boost the number of visitors to Fleetwood and help his hotel and the local economy, Vantini opened two schools in the vicinity of Fleetwood, one for boys and another for girls, totalling 1,000 students.The early Victorian period was marked by high child mortality rates, and Vantini expected that in the long term, the schools could be funded by a form of tontine insurance scheme, whereby the cost to educate children who reached their teenage years was offset by those who had died in infancy.
Vantini called a meeting at the North Euston Hotel to discuss the foundation of the schools with local businessmen and clergy. It was decided that any school that was to be founded would be directly affiliated to the Church of England. This was to be the first major Church of England school in the north of England and a sister school to Marlborough College which had opened the previous year. It was soon established that there was little hope of founding the girls' school and this idea was abandoned, with the boys' school pupil numbers reduced to 200. Consequently, Vantini's involvement with the scheme steadily dissipated, Rev. St. Vincent Beechey, the parish priest of Fleetwood, took over.
Beechey set about finding the funds required to set up such a school. Beechey got the financial support of Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood, The Earl of Derby as patron, the Duke of Devonshire as vice-president and John Bird Sumner, then Bishop of Chester and later Archbishop of Canterbury, as visitor. As a result of Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood's financial problems from over-investing in the development of Fleetwood, he agreed to lease his ancestral home of Rossall Hall to the school for 21 years, with the option of buying it for £7,000 after ten years. The Northern Church of England Boarding School, renamed Rossall College under the reign of William Osborne, opened on 22 August 1844,
1844 to 1914 Initial problems were not unusual for boarding schools of the time, though Rossall nearly shut down in its infancy because of huge outbreaks of Scarlet Fever. The foundation stone to the school chapel, now the Sumner Library, was laid in 1848 by the first ever Bishop of Manchester, James Prince Lee - the diocese having only been created that same year. Rossall's swift and successful development can be seen by its inclusion in the book The Great Schools of England (1865).
The current chapel was constructed in the 1860s and the school underwent further development from the 1880s to 1900 to accommodate more students and to create further facilities such as the gym which still stands. In 1874 Rossall became the first Church of England school to play a Catholic school, Stonyhurst College, in an inter-school sports fixture, at cricket. Protestant newspapers warned against such activities advising Rossall parents to be wary of encroaching papism.
Two decades later, roughly one hundred O.R.s served in the Boer War, nearly half of them winning distinctions or mentions in despatches. Seventeen old boys died in active service, all of whom are now commemorated in the stalls of the school chapel.
Rossall was widely considered to be in top 30 public schools in the UK by the end of Queen Victoria's reign also earning itself a place in the Public Schools Yearbook and the Public School News section of the Cambridge Review. Despite some financial difficulties as a result of fund embezzling by a bursar, by the end of the 1920s Rossall's academic results were amongst the best in the country with record numbers achieving scholarships to Oxbridge and attaining distinctions in the Higher Certificate examinations.
1914 to 1945 During the world wars large numbers of Old Rossallians lost their lives in combat, 297 in World War One alone - the majority of whom are now commemorated in the extension memorial chapel. Rossall has a memorial plaque at St Georges Chapel by the Menin Gate in honour of its fallen, alongside schools such as Rugby, Eton and Harrow. 1,617 ORs fought in World War One, 300 of whom received war honours.['