Rugby is where rugby was invented
and first played in England in 1823.
William Webb Ellis is credited with
being the inventor of the game and to
which the World Rugby Cup is named
after him -- Webb Ellis Trophy.
Rugby is also the home to one
of the nation's most noted and
famous prep schools called Rugby
School. The school is out right now until
the first of the year with perhaps only
an handful of boarders still here over
the present Christmas holidays.
I was surprised how Rugby School
wasn't in a particularly elegant or posh
town that I thought it would be. I think
Harrow College at Harrow-on-the-Hill,
which I visited earlier this year, was more
classy as a prep school town than what I've
seen so far of Rugby, which began in 1567
and Harrow in 1572. While the creme
de la creme of English prep schools, which
I have visited too, is Eton College that was
founded in 1440 by Henry VI.
While at Rugby, I shall
also visit the nearby New Coventry
Cathedral of Sir Basil Spence's fame
and modernistic design that came about
after the Nazis bombed the original
cathedral of Coventry during WWII ...
And, Welsh painter Graham Sutherland's
artistic and religious masterpieces of The
High Altar and Tapestry are also to be
found there at England's now most
modern Anglican cathedral. While the
newer Liverpool Metropolitan Catholic
Cathedral of 1967 is the newest built
cathedral in England, I believe ...
Must close for now, but will write
perhaps more about my stay here at
Rugby in the next fews days or so ...
+Greetings, Monty.
Let me now tell you abit more
about the actual Rugby School.
It costs a parent over £27.000
per annum to send their off-spring
to the public school (which is private
and non-state in the UK). Pupils
there are called "Rugbeians" and
must, if a male, learn to play Rugby
while at the school unless otherwise
excused.
There are 782 boarders and day
students or pupils with 8 houses for
boys and 7 houses for girls. There
are 103 teaching staff. Students age
11-18 are the standard age group.
The annual cost of running the Rugby
School is £17 million per annum.
The problem with Rugby, like other
noted English prep schools, is it
suffers from being so expensive
and overpriced to send one's son
or daughter there. Thus, such
rich Asian and American parents
are turning more and more to prep
schools in countries like New Zealand
to send their off-springs over sending
them to England. In New Zealand,
such prep schools are now rated
better in many cases than those in
the UK not only for greater value
for money but also being safer with
a more disciplined environment in
which to boarder their kids ... Even
noted prep schools like Philip Exeter
and Andover at America's New England
are also attracting more rich foreign
parents over and above those that
traditionally paid for a British prep
school education for their kids.
My last comment:
My stay at Rugby was worthy.
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