When Friends Reunited first started up there was the facility to add the history of schools. I quickly added the following load of nonsense. Since then the system has changed and only privilidged people can change these things. However, my entry remains and can’t be edited! So it is unoffically the official history of the school. It might disapear from the
William Howard School entry, but it will be here for ever more.

William Howard School was founded in 1734 by William Howard in order to win a bet involving the gathering of the most children in one place. His winning plan, which thwarted the alternative method of his constant drinking partner Lord Dacre (digging holes and throwing dolls in), was to offer an education of sorts to the children of the people of Brampton.

The first classes offered where Drama and Home Economics for the girls, and Maths and CDT for the boys.

The school was a roaring success and soon William Howard had drawn thousands of children from areas as diverse as Alston and Wetheral. Lord Dacre was forced to admit defeat, and paid his forfeit of running naked to the Capon Tree and back with the word “fool” smeared on his chest. Dacre later got his revenge by painting the sleeping Howard’s face permanently red, an act commemorrated in the red face of the statue of Howard at the peak of the Moat.

Despite being founded due to the sin of gambling the school was a success and proved
to be a model for other schools around the world. William Howard could not teach the children alone, and so he recruited many friends to assist in the formation of young minds. Among these were Bonny Prince Charlie and a number of daughters of the Naworth Family. Wordsworth and other metaphysical poets found time to teach occaisonally at the school. These were the halcyon days of WHS.

Many gloomy decades were to come with the split of the school into the White House for good children, and the Dark House for the evil ones. Thankfully in the 1970s this split was overcome, and the two groups were reunited, thus settling the balance of the
universe straight, reuniting the Yin with the Yang.

In 1995 the school was rechristened the William Howard School and Centre, indicating its place as a focal point for world affairs. The link with Uru School in Tanzania proved to be a model for many national governments’ foreign policies, and a number of the participants went on to influence world events of the late 1990s.

The new millenium has seen a reappraisal of the role of the school in Brampton and the world at large. Plans include the formation of an independant state encapsulating the area from the smokers cut to the far end of the playing fields. Rumours of lights in the old White House school have led to exploration and the discovery of yet uncharted areas.

The future looks bright for William Howard School and Centre.