[Sherborne Academy, Ransam House, Sherborne, Dorset (John Kidd, Principal).] Printed card, with lithographic illustration of the building, and details of masters, terms and those to whom references may be sent (including the actor W. C. Macready).

A nice piece of Sherborne ephemera, in unusually good condition. Between 1855 and 1860 Ransam House had been used to board boys from Sherborne School. ‘The Sherborne Academy’ to which the present card refers was run by John Kidd (c.1834-1891), FRAS, MCP, at Ransam between the end of 1861 and 1868, when it reverted to Sherborne School. The present item is printed in black ink on both sides of a x cm piece of white card. In very good condition, lightly aged. On the front is a pleasant lithographic illustration of the three-storey white building that housed the Sherborne Academy (with ‘ACADEMY’ in large letters above the window above the front door), Ransam House, with an adjoining building and various figures in the street outside. Beneath the illustration, in fancy lettering: ‘SHERBORNE ACADEMY. / Principal, JOHN KIDD, M.C.P. / MASTERS FOR FRENCH, GERMAN, MUSIC & DRAWING.’ On the reverse, in copperplate, is a list of ‘Masters’ (Kidd, F. Hollmuller, H. M. Custard, R. Brooks and ‘Assistants’) in six fields, followed by ‘Terms per Annum’ and an announcement regarding the notice required ‘previous to the removal of a Pupil’. The side ends with the names of seven men to whom references are ‘kindly permitted, starting with ‘W C Macready Esq, Cheltenham’. This is of course the distinguished actor William Charles Macready (1793-1873), who had retired to Sherborne in 1851, taking an active role in the community there until moving to Cheltenham following his second marriage in 1860 (in the meantime two of his sons were educated at Sherborne School).