A 19 th century programme reveals an energetic array of activities enjoyed by Swindon High School pupils at their annual Sports Day in 1898. The earliest record of a school in Swindon was the Free School founded in 1764 to educate 20 boys and 5 girls. Pupil numbers soon outstripped the accommodation in a cottage in Newport Street and the National School was built on the same site in 1835. The school in The Sands began life as the Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentleman. Swindon Advertiser founder William Morris, one of the schools' early pupils, was enrolled for about eighteen months to complete his education where schoolmaster George Nourse, according to Morris, was a nice, kind, old gentleman but lacking firmness and ability to teach. By 1869 Cornish born Samuel Snell was in charge. One of five sons of a lead miner, Samuel was a pupil teacher by the age of sixteen and the only one of his brothers to escape the Cornish lead mines. ...