The Brooksbank School is a

secondary school A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...

with academy status in Elland, near Halifax in West Yorkshire, England. It is a sports college, as well as the second largest school in

Calderdale Calderdale is a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England, whose population in 2020 was 211,439. It takes its name from the River Calder, and dale, a word for valley. The name Calderdale usually refers to the borough through which the u ...

, behind Trinity Academy. The school currently has over 1,700 pupils and over 250 members of staff.

History

The school was founded in the town of Elland in

, West Yorkshire, by

Joseph Brooksbank Joseph Brookbank, Brooksbank, or Brookesbank (born 1612) was an English cleric and schoolmaster. Life Brookbank was the son of George Brookbank of Halifax, West Yorkshire, Halifax; at Michaelmas term 1632, when he entered Brasenose College, Oxford ...

in 1712, to help forty impoverished children of Elland to learn to read without fees and to write for a charge of one penny a week. Brooksbank grew up in Elland, but left the town at the age of sixteen to become a

haberdasher In British English, a haberdasher is a business or person who sells small articles for sewing, dressmaking and knitting, such as buttons, ribbons, and zippers; in the United States, the term refers instead to a retailer who sells men's clothing, ...

’s apprentice in London. In 1679 he married Mary, daughter of merchant Richard Stamp and niece of the Thomas Stamp who became Lord Mayor in 1691. Brooksbank became a Citizen of the City of London in 1681, and was appointed a Master of the Haberdashers Company in 1718. Joseph Brookbanks's son, Stamp, born in 1694, became a director of the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

by the age of thirty-six, appointed the governor of the bank from 1741-1743, and was a Member of Parliament. He was a millionaire at the time of his death in 1756. In the same year, Stamp’s son, also called Joseph, provided the school with a second endowment. The school moved its premises to Westgate. Charity Commissioners, who inspected the school in 1829, reported that forty children were attending and that the schoolmaster was being paid a salary of £70 a year. A new school, the Elland and District Secondary School, was built on Victoria Road, opening on 12 September 1911 for approximately one hundred pupils. In 1933 this became Elland Grammar School. Twenty five years later the school became comprehensive, took the name 'Brooksbank' from its founder, and instituted a further building program. The Brooksbank School today has a teaching capacity for around 1,700 pupils.

Campus

Brooksbank school from the rear - geograph

The school is on the west side of Elland, and is a five-minute walk from the town centre, and south from the accessible M62 motorway. Bus links include those to Halifax, Huddersfield and Brighouse. Facilities include a sports hall, four tennis courts, three drama studios, a playing field, a 3G Football pitch and a gymnasium. Brooksbank School sponsored sports include badminton, table tennis, and rugby.

Extracurricular activities

Extracurricular activities include football and rugby. The school plays rugby league and competes in national school competitions. Since 2009 the school has been in the national championship final eight times, winning five of those appearances. Each year, the school performs a drama production, and has over forty clubs and societies.

References

External links

The Brooksbank School
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brooksbank School, The Academies in Calderdale Secondary schools in Calderdale Elland