Shrewsbury and the School
The town of Shrewsbury is in the situated in the county of Shropshire in the West Midlands region of
England. It dates back to about 800AD has a fine collection of old buildings including a castle built
from local red sandstone. The name comes from the Old English ‘Scrobbesbyrig’.
There is little doubt that the
most famous ‘Old Boy’ of
Shrewsbury School is Mr
Charles Darwin, the famous
naturalist. He attended
Shrewsbury in 1818 before
heading off to Edinburgh to
train as a doctor. Darwin did
not finish his medical training
and as we all know, he went
went on to spend several years
exploring on HMS Beagle
before eventually producing is
famous work ‘On the Origin of
Species’.
Among the old buildings you will find those that formed the
original Shrewsbury School, founded in 1552 by royal
charter under King Edward VI. The school outgrew its
original site and moved to current spacious site on
Kingsland in 1882.
It is less well known that Darwin’s
grandson, Sir Charles Galton
Darwin was a physicist of some
repute. He studied under
Rutherford and Bohr as a
postgraduate and worked on the
Manhattan Project. He later
became director of the National
Physical Laboratory.
The Main School Building
Top Common
The Main School Building, School House and Darwin statue
Cricket by the Chapel
The Alington Hall
Kingsland Hall
A Physics Laboratory
The Peterson Room
The Physics and Chemistry Building
An IT Room
