A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales

Nicholas Carlisle (1771 -1847) entered the Naval Service before becoming Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries in Somerset and dedicating his time to a series of long,detailed and useful compilations.

Between 1808 and 1813 he produced topographical dictionaries of England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland.

In 1818 he published the pioneering work "A Concise Description of the Endowed Grammar Schools in England and Wales".

He subsequently indexed the journal "Archaeologia" and the first 14 reports of the charity commissioners, and was for a time a commissioner himself.

The Charity Commission was proposed in 1816 by Henry Brougham (later Lord Chancellor), and its reports, beginning in 1819, form an important source for the history of 19th-century education.

Carlisle pre-empted the Charity Commission with the publication of this major work which attempted to give an account of all the grammar schools in England and Wales.

To compile this work Carlisle had sent out a circular to all schools asking for information which he then edited into book form. In total Carlisle gives historical and statistical information on some 475 schools, and though he started to compile a second edition to include the schools which had been omitted or which had not replied, this revised version never saw the light of day before his death in 1847.

The work originally arose from Carlisle 's interests in heraldry and topography and it is suitably decorated with 68 engravings depicting school seals.

There is no comparable contemporary work of documentary information on British schools and this makes it a key and unique resource for the study of the history of education just prior to the Victorian era.