Pupils, students, staff and guests joined together at Blackburn Cathedral for our Founder’s Day service on Friday 20th June 2025, to pay tribute and offer our thanks to those who, over the last five centuries have helped to form Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School.
The service was led by The Reverend James Lawrence, Canon Missioner, who welcomed us all to this annual service.
Year 6 pupils performed African Traditional Allunde, under the direction of Miss Cockshott, Subject lead for Music, followed by a reading ‘Freedom’ by H Hunt Jackson read by Year 8 pupil, Mohyuddeen Shakoor and another beautiful performance by Our school Choir and Year 6 pupils of Cuncti Simus Concanentes.
The Commemoration of Benefactors was addressed by Head Mrs Gammon:
“On Founder’s Day we gather here before God to pay tribute and offer our thanks to those who, over the last five centuries have helped to form Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School.
We owe deep gratitude to the many people who have helped us since our foundation and whose generosity has helped to ensure our survival. We will be naming some individuals, but we should remember the many anonymous benefactors who, since the sixteenth century, have helped to support our School, in particular, the parishioners of Blackburn who, in 1509, provided the first endowment for the Chantry and School very close to this spot.
We now remember together Thomas Stanley, 2nd Earl of Derby for his endowment of land, and the Duchy of Lancaster whose annual payment of £4 7s 4d was initially paid to the Schoolmaster. This was raised to £100 by HRH Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.
We remember our seventeenth-century benefactor, Sir Edmund Assheton of Whalley and, in the nineteenth century, Joseph Feilden, who gave us the land on which the School now stands. We thank John Tattersall of Quarry Bank who in the same era endowed a scholarship fund, and Daniel Thwaites for his extreme generosity, crucial in establishing the main building at West Park Road which we still occupy to this day.
Together, we remember and thank Robert Carr Radcliffe, who as Chairman of Governors generously sponsored a New Science Wing in 1905, now the Radcliffe Wing, and his widow who furnished the Radcliffe Room after her husband’s death.
Alderman Harry Harrison we remember and thank for acquiring for us the playing fields at Lammack from which we still benefit. To Alderman Lawrence Cotton OB, Mayor of Blackburn from 1917-1921, we express our gratitude for the House Challenge Shield, first presented on 1st July 1920 and still in use.
We remember Robert Slater who was at the School from 1896-1898 and gave a stained glass window, the Charter Window, unveiled in Big School in 1926, and Thomas Boys Lewis who provided the remaining stained glass windows in Big School with their Elizabethan theme. We thank the Prest family, the Whittakers, the Walshs, Mr Barnes, Mr Read, Mr Podmore, Mr Lynch, Mr Cook, Mr Peat, Mr Bland and Mr Sharratt for their contributions in order that these windows could be refurbished.
For Hartley House, now the Art Department, we thank the former Headmaster, Mr Arthur Holden, Mrs Bertha Holden, Mr William Hare (Senior), Mr Edwin Leach Hartley, Sir Harold Derbyshire, Miss Annie Holden, Dr N T Holden, Miss M M Holden, Mrs J M Cooper and the Cambridge Old Blackburnians’ Association.
We remember and thank Mr John Singleton and his family for all their work in supporting the School and for their contributions to the Sixth Form Centre Singleton House.
We thank Henry Whittaker, OB, for his generosity in giving to the School the painting of the old Parish Church which hangs to this day in the Head’s study, the original portrait of Queen Elizabeth I in Big School, and the Burne-Jones stained glass window above the entrance to the Holden Laboratories.
We thank Blackburn Council for their support which included a generous contribution towards the construction of the Holden laboratories in 1956 and, more recently, the redevelopment of the Brooklands Building.
For refurbishment of laboratories we thank the Brian Mercer Charitable Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and Blackburn Chemicals Ltd. We also thank the Ogden Trust and the Garfield Weston Foundation for their support.
To the Old Blackburnians’ Association we are indebted for the considerable generosity over the years in funding a number of major refurbishments and equipment, including the Garstang Room, the Primary Science Laboratory, the Chandeliers in Big School, a new school minibus and their financial support of both the Duke of Edinburgh scheme and the Year 9 Creative and Humanities days.
To the Old Co Association we give our thanks for their support since we became a Free School in 2014. We also thank them for their donation of a new school minibus, their support in subsidising whole school visits and events and their donation to the redevelopment of the Brooklands building.
We are grateful to all those involved in the Lammack Sports facilities in particular, the Football Foundation and Blackburn Community Sports Club.
We thank all individuals and companies including Gray’s school-wear who have provided prizes.
We thank Mr John Read who has made a substantial bequest that allowed the school to refurbish both the gym and the swimming pool in September 2019.
We thank Mr Alan Haworth who has left the school £40 000 and Mr Ian Wilson Stancliffe who has the left the school the sum of £10 000, both of which have been used to support the redevelopment of the Brooklands building.
We thank the Old Blackburnian Lodge for the support it has provided to school.
To all the individuals who make regular contributions, large and small we offer our deep gratitude.
It is right we should be conscious of those who, like the parishioners of Blackburn in our earliest years, have given anonymously. There are many others in the School’s long history whom I have not mentioned by name on this occasion but whom we remember and thank nonetheless and whose spirit continues to influence our existence at the School, and to them we should add those who simply give time, often the most precious commodity of all, who reassure and support in myriad ways. For all of them, in this Cathedral, the direct successor to the building in which we were founded, we give our heartfelt thanks to Almighty God”.
The Head concluded by also thanking those who simply give time, often the most precious commodity of all, who reassure and support in myriad ways.
We paused for a moment of reflection, whilst Lawrence Vidler, Year 12 Sixth Form Student, performed Prelude in G Minor by Rachmaninoff, followed by a reading from Year 12 student, Khadija Zeb.
The Reverend James Lawrence, Canon Missioner, addressed the congregation followed by another performance from Year 6 pupils and the school choir of Mozart’s ‘Donna Nobis’.
Bidding prayers were led by school pupils and the Lord’s Prayer, read by Head Boy, Aamir Munshi.
The choirs’ final performance was C Tins ‘Baba Yetu.
A beautiful service that was full of thanks and gratitude. Thank you to all our pupils, students, and staff who represented QEGS at this significant event, you did Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School proud.
