William Gilberd

The Gilberd School was founded in 1912 as The Junior Technical School and in 1957 changed its name to The Gilberd School when girls were admitted. It moved to a new site in the 1970s.

Today it has the distinction of being one of more than 150 schools in England to be closed because of faulty concrete in its construction. The Gilberd School, Colchester, Essex – the school will not reopen until 11 September for students in Year 8-11, with Year 7 pupils returning a day later. (BBC News)

The school shield draws inspiration from William Gilberd’s crest.

As you may know, Colchester is one of the oldest towns in England and fortunately not all the buildings were built to fall down after just fifty years. Tymperleys is a 15th century house with a walled garden built for John Tymperley, a Councillor and steward to the Duke of Norfolk who in those days had a house in Colchester – now The Red Lion Hotel. In the latter half of the 16th century Tymperleys was lived in by William Gilberd.

It is reached by turning off Trinity Street through an archway. Set into the arch on the left as you enter is the door to an excellent secondhand bookshop. Here is what I bought. I think I have read at least one before.

But I digress. Tymperleys has not changed much over the years.

The main change in the 21st century is its use as a tearoom and a sympathetic extension to house a modern kitchen.

I had two Flat Whites, the second to take away the taste of a cloyingly sweet slice of Bakewell Tart. It is owned by Nick and Shiela Charrington who know how to look after old buildings; they live in Layer Marney Tower, England’s tallest Tudor gatehouse, a few miles outside Colchester.

Here we are, 300 words in, and I haven’t told you about William Gilberd of whom I treat today. As usual, with a bit of editing, Wikipedia can do the job for me.

“Gilberd (often spelt Gilbert) was born in Colchester to Jerome Gilberd, a borough recorder. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge. After gaining his MD from Cambridge in 1569, and a short spell as bursar of St John’s College, he left to practice medicine in London and travelled on the continent. In 1573, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. In 1600 he was elected President of the college. He was Elizabeth I’s own physician from 1601 until her death in 1603, and James VI and I renewed his appointment.

His primary scientific work was De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth) published in 1600. In this work, he describes many of his experiments with his model Earth called the terrella. From these experiments, he concluded that the Earth was itself magnetic and that this was the reason compasses point north (previously, some believed that it was the pole star (Polaris) or a large magnetic island on the north pole that attracted the compass). He was the first to argue, that the centre of the Earth was iron, and he considered an important and related property of magnets was that they can be cut, each forming a new magnet with north and south schools.” (Wikipedia entry, edited)

I hope the boys and girls at The Gilberd School understand this because most of it is beyond me.