CCCS looks to the future
We were visited today by Mr Semmence who is the Headmaster of Repton School in Derbyshire. Repton was founded in 1573 by a local landowner and knight Sir John Port who had been given the old monastery in Repton following its dissolution by Henry VIII. He had no children of his own so he founded a grammar school which would have the use of the buildings. It is still those buildings which form the core of the School which Mr Semmence runs today. Mr Semmance started by telling us the extraordinary story of what happened when the school decided to start building a new Sixth Form centre. Digging began but no sooner was it underway than construction was halted by a grizzly discovery – a corpse. The telephone call was made to the police who were round in an instant, blue lights flashing! Experts from Humberside Constabulary were called and it was quickly established that the body was not a recent one, but most likely that of a monk from the former monastery. A Roman Catholic priest has been asked to rebury the monk near where the high altar of the monastery church would have been. These are some of the hazards of having an institution based on one of the most ancient sites in England.
