The Spencer Archives

"A History of Brigg Grammar School" was published in 1969 by Dr Henthorn as a PhD thesis relating to the celebrations for the 300th birthday of the setting up of the School. As a thesis, the book was generally considered to  be 'hard work' by most non-historians and I thought that an abridged version might strive to bring most of the facts together in readable form whilst at the same time avoiding the inevitable 'clutter' required for scholarly dissertations.

I had the pleasure of being taught  history by 'Tod' Henthorn in the 1950's and, had it not been for one or two unfortunate personal circumstances at that time, would have pursued my studies as a historian in the Sixth form rather than the Maths and Science route I eventually opted for. 

Below is a 'slideshow' of pages enabling you to read a 16 page  version of Dr Henthorn's written by myself. I do hope that I have managed to capture the important bits correctly. 

Please note that the 'slideshow' is best viewed at full screen.  Move the cursor over the image to the right, click on the arrows shown on the bottom right of screen, and read successive pages by using the larger arrows for right and left movement.

The School decided in 1914 to publish its own, in-house, magazine, partially to provide its readers with a record of school life in all its various phases and partially to keep former school members in touch with one another. For many years the old copies of these magazines were kept in various locations, many at the Lincolnshire Archive Centre in Lincoln, but many also at school and privately. Having scanned all the copies that could be found into pdf format (largely searchable) the files were uploaded to the Briggensian web site and became available for downloading.

Also on the Briggensian's website is even shorter history of the school devised by Nigel Fisher which is well worth investigating, as is the remarkable pdf copy of the 1919 prospectus for the school.