Deacon's School

The school opened in 1721 as Mr. Deacon's Charity School in Cowgate. In his will, Thomas Deacon, a successful wool merchant, provided for the creation of a school for 20 poor boys. In the 1830s, Deacon's School merged with The Island School for Girls, which had been established by a Mrs Island in her will.[1]

New accommodation for the school was built on Queen's Gardens in Dogsthorpe, opened in 1960 as Deacon's Grammar School. It was a voluntary aided school with about 450 boys in the 1960s.

It became a voluntary controlled co-educational comprehensive school in 1976. It became a grant maintained school in the 1990s and applied to become a Technology College, becoming a specialist school in 1994. The building remained in Dogsthorpe for 47 years until the Academy was built on the same site.[2] Administration moved from Cambridgeshire to Peterborough in 1998.

The Deacon's School Trust (now known as Thomas Deacon Foundation), created by Thomas Deacon's will, partially funds the Academy[3] with Perkins Engines. The school merged with John Mansfield School on Western Avenue and the Hereward Community College[4] (a former secondary modern school on Reeves Way[5] in Eastfield) to form a £46m Academy. Plans were approved on 11 August 2004, and it was originally due to open in 2006 and cost £34m. Construction began in July 2005.

Deacon's Grammar School

• John Challens CBE, Director of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) from 1976 to 1978, designed the electrical circuits for Britain's first nuclear bomb test[6]
• Michael Day, medical physicist[7]
• Ian Gray, former presenter with BBC Radio Cambridgeshire[8]
• Ron Jacobs, rugby player, later President of the Rugby Football Union (RFU)
• Richard Littlejohn, columnist with the Daily Mail[9]
• Don Lusher OBE, jazz trombonist
• Leonard Rosoman OBE, artist[10]
• Prof Roy Severn CBE FREng, Professor of Civil Engineering from 1968 to 1995 at the University of Bristol, President from 1991 to 1992 of the Institution of Civil Engineers
• Lloyd Watson, blues guitarist
• Mark Wildman, snooker player, made the first televised century break in November 1960.

Deacon's School

• Ajaz Akhtar (1968–), cricketer
• Adrian Durham, radio presenter
• Matthew Etherington, footballer[11]
• MJ Hibbett, singer-songwriter[12]
• Waseem Mirza, TV Presenter, Reporter, Actor
• Moses Samandar, Poet and Writer[13][14]
• Simon Toyne (1968–), novelist

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