Shrewsbury School

Shrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. It is one of the original nine "Clarendon Schools" or public schools defined by the Public Schools Act 1868. Originally a boarding school for boys, girls have been admitted into the Sixth Form since 2008 and its mixed gender roll of around 720 includes approximately 130 day pupils. From 2014 Shrewsbury School will become fully co-educational. Pupils are admitted at the age of 13 by selective examination. For approximately ten per cent of the pupils, English is a second or additional language.

Links To Peel
Peel attended the school in 1952 and left before the sixth form, while he was at their boarding school and his greatest hero in his school days was his Housemaster, Hugh Brooke, whom he later described as:


 * 'The greatest man I ever knew' 

Brooke was wise enough to see that John Ravenscroft,  to give him his proper name, was enthused only by one subject - pop music - and he left him to play his records, keep his charts and read his pop magazines to his heart's content - though not always to the pleasure of those in neighbouring studies. Peel remained in touch with Shrewsbury and declared his intention of dedicating his autobiography to the memory of Hugh Brooke.

However there was a dark side at the school, where in his autobiography, Peel speaks of "systematic sexual abuse" at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire, which he attended from the age of 13. Peel wrote of the sexual demands made on new boys from "study monitors", who were four or five years older. In the same book, Peel mentions being raped by an older student in the cemetery on the outskirts of Shrewsbury.