?Scarborough college - social history

The following are first hand quotes and diary extracts relating to the Scarborough College. They are taken from Paul Allens book "Neath a foreign sky."

Hugh had however, stayed in Scarborough with grandparents William and Joanna Coverley, and at the age of eight had begun life as a ?day boy? at the austere Scarborough College. Located in Scarborough?s Filey Road at the time that Coverley had been at the College it had been ruled by the indomitable, some may say notorious, Armstrong brothers, the outwardly sombre and taciturn Lawrence [nicknamed ?Pluto?], the head of the Junior House, and the ?oversized extrovert? Percy ?Snot? Armstrong, the Head of School. An austere establishment where white starched Eton collars, Tweed suits and waistcoats had been the order of the day, a contemporary of Coverley says of his time at the college between 1923 and 1931:

?We were soundly taught, but with little attempt to capture our imaginations. We worked from 9am to 1pm including Saturday mornings and from 4pm to 6pm followed by ninety minutes of homework. If we did not learn we were punished. Beating, detention, and lines were common, with corporal punishment handed out by everyone from Percy Armstrong down to the prefects. So it was that by the time we left, usually at sixteen or seventeen, we had our School Certificates, most as I remember it, with the matriculation that gave us entrance to universities?.