Wilde

WILDE HOUSE - Work hard

This score is named after the Wilde family who lived in the Flint House from 1588. In the 1740s, John Wilde left money for the building of a school behind the house for the free education of boys from the families of fishermen. He nominated a minister and churchwardens to use the rents from his property to appoint a schoolmaster to teach 40 boys reading, writing, arithmetic and Latin. Any extra money was used to repair the schoolhouse and relieve the poor. A school remained there until WWII when it was bombed.

Wilde’s commitment to providing free education in Lowestoft links to our value to ‘work hard’. We expect our pupils to appreciate that hard work in school will help them unlock their future potential. Working hard in lessons and through homework, as the boys who benefited from Wilde’s school would have done, extends Wilde’s legacy to the current day.

Celebrating our local heroes is an important part of how we advocate for the community of Lowestoft so, who better to represent Wilde Score and the heritage of boys’ education in the town than famous author and illustrator Michael Foreman OBE. He has won numerous awards including the Hans Christian Anderson Award, the top recognition for children’s books. He grew up in Pakefield, Lowestoft with his mother and two older brothers, he never knew his father who died shortly before Foreman was born. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2022 for his service to literature.

To represent our passion for STEM, pupils and staff of Wilde House voted for their inspirational STEM focus figure and chose the wonderful Dorothy Hodgkin. Hodgkin grew up in Suffolk and went on to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A fitting representative of the Wilde House value to work hard, Hodgkin is responsible for unlocking the mystery of many complex chemicals. One such chemical is insulin - key to understanding and helping to treat diabetes.