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Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy is a mixed Church of England High School operating under academy status, in the city of Lancaster in the north-west of England. The school has around 1650 pupils between 11 and 18 years old, 350 of which are part of The Sixth Form at Ripley St Thomas.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy )〕 == History == The school started life as Ripley Hospital, founded by Julia, wife of Thomas Ripley, a merchant who traded out of Lancaster and Liverpool. Thomas Ripley was born in Lancaster in 1791, and had been an apprentice to a grocer and linen draper. Since his mercantile career began later than 1807, there is no evidence to link Thomas Ripley with the slave trade. Indeed, much of his wealth stems from the fact that he was one of the first English merchants to embark on trade with China, and much of his subsequent trade was with the East Indies. As a devout Christian, he was keen to establish a Charity Hospital, modelled on the Liverpool Blue Coat School. Having no children, on his death in 1852 he left a considerable sum of money in trust to establish the Ripley Hospital to cater for fatherless children, especially those whose fathers had been lost at sea. On 3 November 1864, it was designated to educate an equal number of boys and girls – 300 in total – providing they lived within either of Lancaster Priory or of Liverpool Cathedral. The main school building, originally costing £30,000, included a first-class gym, woodwork and metalwork rooms, a domestic school for girls, and heated swimming pool, four courts for playing fives and enough full-sized football pitches to allow 150 boys to play at the same time. A farm of some kept the school supplied with home produced meat, milk and poultry, and a vast kitchen garden gave a constant supply of fresh vegetables. This school was well in advance of its time. The farm won awards for the quality of its meat. The work of the Hospital continued until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, when the building was requisitioned by the army. The pupils then moved out to Capernwray Hall. They expected to return at the end of the War, but the government requisitioned Ripley for another three years for use as an emergency Teachers' Training College. By then, it was realised that the need for an endowed orphanage was much reduced. State pensions allowed more one-parent families to stay together, and the fashion had moved away from institutional units. After the trainee teachers left, the building became a National School, then a boys' secondary modern school until 1966 when Ripley Boys' and St. Thomas Girls' Schools amalgamated to become Ripley St. Thomas Church of England School. In September 1996, Ripley was designated a Language College. Whilst not changing in any way its status as a Voluntary Aided Church School, this does enable the school to develop its language facilities and so become a 'Centre of Excellence' for modern languages, including French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Malaysian and Arabic.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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