Latymer was established in 1624 on Church Street, Edmonton by bequestofEdward Latymer, a London City merchant in Hammersmith.[1] Although most of his wealth passed to the people of Hammersmith and the Parish of St Dunstan's (now Latymer Upper School), he named certain properties and estates to fund the education and livelihoods of "eight poore boies of Edmonton" with a doublet, a pair of breeches, a shirt, a pair of woollen stockings and shoes distributed biannually on Ascension Day and All Saints' Day. Pupils wore the red Latymer cross on their sleeves.
In 1662, John Wild of Edmonton made a bequest for the annual maintenance of a schoolmaster and a poor scholar at Cambridge. In 1697, Thomas Style extended the bequest to fund the education of "twenty poor boys ... Grammar and Latin tongue." Several similar benefactions produced about £550 per annum, which funded the instruction of more than one hundred boys, of which sixty were clothed. In 1811, Ann Wyatt, a widow from Hackney, willed her Navy Annuities for the construction and maintenance of a new school. The school-room was built in 1811 in accordance to her will.[2]
The school did not take on Latymer's name for some centuries; when it finally did, it was known as Latymer's School. At some point, the apostrophe was dropped and the name modified to the Latymer School. It has been situated on its present site since 1910, when it also became coeducational.[1]
The school motto, Qui Patitur Vincit ('Who endures wins'), was also adopted in 1910 by Richard Ashworth, then headmaster. Prior to this, the motto was Palmam Qui Meruit Ferat ('Let he who bears the palm (of honour) deserve it').
The school has formal links with St John's College, Cambridge (Edward Latymer's College) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (the College of Edward Latymer's father, William Latymer) which have endowments which may be used for the furtherance of the studies of former Latymer pupils at those colleges.
In 1967 the school switched to a comprehensive intake as a result of Circular 10/65, a request from the Labour government to local education authorities to plan for conversion to a fully comprehensive education system. However, a certain amount of informal selection still took place in liaison with local primary schools.
The school underwent its most recent Ofsted inspection on 24 March 2022, when it received an overall grade of 'Good', after having previously been graded 'Outstanding' on 25 January 2008.[3] In the 2023 'Parent Power' rankings, published by The Times newspaper, the school was ranked 21st in the UK and seventh-best in London. In that same year, 86.5% of GCSE examinations achieved A-grades (15th nationwide), and 61.7% of entries gained A-grades at A-level, while 83% obtained A or B grades (36th nationwide).[4]
^Mank, G.W. (2005). Women in Horror Films, 1940s. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. p. 54. ISBN978-0-7864-2335-4. Retrieved 22 March 2024. Latymer School in London, as well as the Golophyn School and the Tacchomo School of Music and Dramatic"
^"I couldn't paint golden angels – Chapter I". Retrieved 30 January 2017. As I didn't go to an upper-class school, though Latymer was reckoned so locally ... Kids were offered bright hopes in schools like the Latymer School, Edmonton, which was perhaps of the best of its kind, and taught hitherto middle class values to the sons and daughters of the working class
^Maybury, Mark (1 January 2007). "Yorick Alexander Wilks: A Meaningful Journey". In Ahmad, Khurshid; Brewster, Christopher; Stevenson, Mark (eds.). Words and Intelligence II. Text, Speech and Language Technology. Vol. 36. Springer Netherlands. pp. 1–37. doi:10.1007/1-4020-5833-0_1. ISBN978-1-4020-5832-5.
