Bracondale School

Bracondale School was a private boys' school in the Bracondale area of Norwich, Norfolk. It existed from 1821 to 1993.

History

The school was opened on Bracondale Hill in July 1821 as an academy for boys between the ages of 8 and 16 years. It was established by Daniel Banfield Hickie who had recently relocated from Dublin, following dismissal of his allegations of fraudulent conduct within the Record Tower there, and who advertised that he conducted a system of instruction enabling completion of his pupils’ education “in little more than half the time usually spent in public schools and on a much more solid basis”.

Hickie was a classicist who contributed extensively to A. J. Valpy’s publications, reputedly being responsible for more than one third of the 143 volumes comprising Valpy’s Delphin Classics. He left Bracondale in 1828 on his appointment as headmaster of Hawkshead Grammar School in succession to Thomas Bowman, who had taught William Wordsworth, and he was made an honorary Doctor of Laws by Glasgow University in the same year.

In 1831 Bracondale was reported to have been purchased by a clergyman-schoolmaster, but by the 1840s the establishment was headed by William Francis Paul whose “kindly and gentle method was combined with high religious principle and unswerving integrity”. Paul educated there “a great many who subsequently rose to distinction” (including Sir Gordon Sprigg, prime minister of Cape Colony), and both during his headmastership and for some years thereafter the school was popularly spoken of as “Paul’s”.

Following Paul’s retirement in 1862, John Paul Cadge (who had previously conducted Bridge House School at Bungay) took control of Bracondale, then described as a “classical and commercial academy”, and he continued as its headmaster until ill health obliged him to share the position with A. W. Shakespeare. Shakespeare took sole charge in the early 1890s and was briefly succeeded by Frederick Pierpoint prior to Dr Francis Darkins Wheeler acquiring the school in 1896.