Name Percy Warrington | Died 1961 | |
The Reverend Percy Ewart Warrington (1889–1961) was an educationalist and evangelical Church of England clergyman who created an education empire, known as Allied Schools in the 1920s by purchasing a group of 10 schools in Britain and a girls school in Kenya. One of the schools was located in Wellington, Shropshire: Warrington renamed it the Wrekin College. Stowe School, founded in 1920, owes its existence to financial assistance from Allied Schools.
He saw an advertisement in The Times for Canford Manor and bought it the same day and founded Canford School which opened on 15 May 1923.
The Martyrs' Memorial and Church of England Trust became its trustees. The schools ran into severe financial difficulties during the years of depression in the early 1930s and were rescued by the intervention of the Legal and General Assurance Society. As a result, in 1934, the influence of the Martyrs' Trust was restricted to nominate only one sixth of the Governors of School. The Legal and General mortgages were finally repaid in 1980. The new Allied Schools Council was then set up. He was instrumental in founding St Peter's College, Oxford.
Warrington's career is described mostly favourably in an article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, but a very detailed and well-referenced account of Warrington's personality and methods by W. A. Evershed of St. Peter's College gives a less favourable account.