| Sir
Robert Hitcham 1572 – 1636 |
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| Sir Robert Hitcham was born of humble stock at Levington in the county of Suffolk. His father and grandfather had a business cutting and selling heather which was used for the making of brooms. | ||
| He commenced his education at the Free School in Ipswich and later became a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was a man of intelligence and a good orator and entered Gray’s Inn to study law, in which he was eventually destined for high office. In 1596 he became the elected member for West Looe and by 1603 had been appointed as Attorney-General to Queen Anne of Denmark, the consort of King James I. | ||
| At the beginning of 1616 a knighthood was conferred upon him to coincide with his appointment as King James’ senior Serjeant-at-Law and he acted as judge of Assize on several occasions. In 1623 he was elected member for Orford, near Woodbridge, and continued as member for that place until 1628. | ||
| In 1635 he bought Framlingham castle with its lands for £14,000 and, conscious of his good fortune, settled the title of the estate upon Pembroke College for charitable uses. Sir Robert died on 15th August 1636 and is buried in a magnificent tomb in Framlingham church. | ||
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| His will stipulated that several houses for the poor should be set up in Framlingham, Debenham (both in Suffolk) and in Coggeshall to help them into work, and that a school should be built at Framlingham to teach forty or more of the poorest and neediest children of those three towns to “read, write and cast accounts” and that £10 should be given to each scholar to secure an apprenticeship. One might ask why a Suffolk man should help the children of a small Essex town, but it appears that Sir Robert was very friendly with the Guyon family who were wealthy wool-merchants in Coggeshall. | ||
| It proved to be very difficult for the children of Coggeshall to take advantage of the opportunities offered under the terms of Sir Robert’s will, so in 1722 the Trustees at Pembroke looked again at the will and decided that Coggeshall should have its own school along with money from the trust for apprenticeships, and so a school was started in a room in a building on the Market Hill. In 1787 a room was leased in Crane’s House (which now houses houses the Clockhouse tea-room) and Henry Emery was appointed as school master, a post he was to hold for 49 years. | ||
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In 1858 the school in West Street was built opposite Paycocke House on glebe land purchased for the sum of £100 and was opened in June 1859. This money enabled the Vicar to purchase St. Nicholas’ chapel, the derelict gate-house of the long-destroyed Cistercian abbey. It closed around the time of the Great War. The building is still there and the exterior has recently been restored. |
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Hitcham School in West Street, c1885 |
The former Hitcham School, 2008 |
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| The Sir Robert Hitcham charity still exists, and small sums are still distributed by the trustees to help Coggeshall children going into higher education. | ||
