WHEN 400 people sit down to dinner at the Galpharm Stadium in November next year, they will be celebrating a chain of events which began when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.

The guests will gather to mark the 400th anniversary of the charter which set up King James’s School in Almondbury.

Today it is the oldest school in Kirklees and one of the most historic in Yorkshire.

Few comprehensive schools anywhere in the country can claim a virtually continuous history on a single site.

Famous names from the school’s past include Olympic runner Derek Ibbotson, actor Gorden Kaye from cult TV show ‘Allo, ‘Allo and England cricketer Ryan Sidebottom.

They are all part of a rich and varied past of which they are rightly proud.

Roger Dowling, chief editor of a new history of the school, says: “ Its success is such that it is currently the most over-subscribed school in Huddersfield.

“The Old Almondburians’ Society has some 800 members all over the world. It is believed to be the biggest such school society in the country outside the public school system.”

The man who began it all was John Kaye, a 19-year-old who lived in Woodsome Hall with his parents.

He strode into action when Henry VIII broke with Rome, dissolved the monasteries and gained power to seize church chantries.

Such a chantry, known as St Helen’s Chapel, was located near his home and John set about the task of pulling it down stone by stone and reconstructing it on the site of the present school.

A scholar called Mr Smyth was then appointed to come and teach there – the foundations of the present-day King James’s School had been laid.

What Old Almondburians are celebrating next year is 400 years since an official charter was granted by King James I.

His approval was needed to safeguard the future of the school, which by that stage lay empty, derelict and ‘destitute of teaching’.

The charter actually disappeared for many years and was thought lost for ever. Only a chance visit to an exhibition in Leeds in 1952 led to it being reunited with the school.

In the past 400 years, the school has suffered many ups and downs and has nearly become extinct on many occasions. It has also featured in some unusual episodes.

Rev Francis Marshall, who was headmaster from 1878-1895, was a fanatic rugby fan who made such a nuisance of himself in opposing the professionalisation of the game that his frustrated opponents set up the rugby league in the George Hotel in Huddersfield.

A boarding school until 1922, the school then passed into the stewardship of Huddersfield Corporation.

Unfortunately, the Corporation failed to take proper charge of the many ancient financial endowments received by the school over the centuries, leading to a court case and an £800,000 out-of-court settlement reached in the George Hotel in 2004.

The school trust still owns extensive properties locally which provide the school with a handsome private annual income.

Margaret Thatcher became personally involved in the school as secretary of state for education when there were plans to convert it into a sixth form college in the 1970s.

Today the school has around 850 pupils in the 11-16 age range and has rebuilding plans because it is so over-subscribed.

Notable pupils of the past include actor Felix Aylmer, who played many a judge or schoolteacher in films and TV between 1933 and 1968, and Stephen Coward who was involved as QC in the Soham murder trial.

Then there is Bryan Hopkinson, British ambassador to Bosnia for five years from 1995, and beer writer Michael Jackson, who sadly died in August.

One who got away was Labour politician Harold Wilson, later to serve two terms as this country’s Prime Minister.

He always wanted to go to the school but didn’t quite make the grade and ended up at Royds Hall Grammar School.

King James’s School in Almondbury: An Illustrated History 1608-2008 is published by The Old Almondburians’ Society in hardback and is available from any good bookshop at £10 (ISBN 978 0 9557314 0 2) or from R D Haigh, Floresco House, Oakhill Road, Brighouse, HD6 1SN at £12.50 inc p & p. Copies can also be ordered online at www.oas.org.uk