Newtown, the Story of a School - The First Hundred Years

Founded by Non-Conformist businessmen from the town’s industrial power base, the woollen mills and the engineering works, to provide a non-sectarian education for their children, Newtown School, Trowbridge has seen it all. This is its story.

The book offers an often unique and insightful view of the developing face of education in the twentieth century. Its author provides an introductory framework, giving the history of the school and its staff.

The assembled stories of former pupils take us from the late nineteenth century through to the 1990s. This gives an organic feel to the narrative; of differing perspectives, of fresh eyes discovering the school.

The school, was described by an early HM Inspector as “the most beautiful and up-to-date school in the West of England” and its plans were sent to the Paris International Exhibition of 1900 as a fine example of a British school.

The book is a celebration of how the school developed over the years reflecting the town’s growing manufacturing base which attracted an increasing number of newcomers, always welcoming and well known for handling challenges successfully and effectively.