A unique insight into the life of a Sherborne schoolmaster is provided by a collection of 58 personal diaries generously loaned to the Sherborne School archives by the King family. The diaries, which cover the years 1865 to 1931, were kept by Henry Robinson King (1855-1935) who taught at Sherborne School from 1883 to 1925.
Born on 6 July 1855 at Kirkby Stephen Vicarage in Westmorland, Henry King was educated at Windermere College and then Clifton College where he was in T.E. Brown’s house. He went on to Exeter College, Oxford, where he met his lifelong friend Reginald Blomfield, the architect later credited ‘as the man responsible above all others for the aspect of modern Sherborne [School]’. On leaving Oxford in 1879, Henry was articled to a firm of solicitors in Kendal and after qualifying as a solicitor he worked in Gray’s Inn Lane. However, after four years, Henry decided that the law was not for him and in September 1883 he was appointed as an assistant master at Sherborne School, where he would remain for the next 42 years, teaching form IVA and serving as housemaster of Abbeylands.
The diaries cover Henry’s schooldays and as an undergraduate at Oxford University, his time as an articled solicitor, and teaching at Sherborne School. He records not only local and world events, but also the weather, the number of miles he has cycled (in 1921 he cycled at total of 3690 miles), the books he has read, his marriage to Connie and the birth of their children, and his decision, at the age of 55, to become an ordained priest. The diaries cover momentous years for the world and for Sherborne School, spanning the First World War during which a number of his former pupils and colleagues were killed, and the years of economic depressions and scandals at the School that caused pupil numbers to fall.
There are, unfortunately, frustrating gaps in the run of the diaries, with 1867, 1869, 1880, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1896, 1901-1905 missing from the sequence.
The make of diary used by Henry changed over time: he used a Renshaws Diary 1868-1874, a Post Diary 1875-1882, Harwood’s Letter Size Diary 1886-1985, Walker’s No.4 Diary 1898-1900, Charles Letts’s Pocket Diary 1904-1924, an Onoto Diary 1925, and Collins’ Pocket Diary 1926-1931.
See also:
- Henry Robinson King (1855-1935)
- Abbeylands
For further information about the Sherborne School Archives please contact the School Archivist.
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