Repton: Basil Rathbone's old school house is given a 21st century revamp

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Repton School’s historic Old Mitre building started life as a pub, became a school house in the late 1800s and temporary home to such famous names as Basil Rathbone, Harold Abrahams and Dr Michael Ramsey – as Sue Grief, the school’s press officer, recounts here.

Basil Rathbone, famous for playing Sherlock Holmes

Dr Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury

The Old Mitre building in a mid-winter snow scene

Tony Willkinson, a former Repton School pupil and ex-chairman of high street chain Wilkinson Hardware Stores, opens the Old Mitre building

the South Derbyshire village of Repton is full of historic sites and buildings and perhaps, as a result, ones that would attract considerable attention if located elsewhere are hardly noticed by many as they pass through or around the village.

One such is the Old Mitre, which is to the left of the village cross if you stand looking up the hill towards Burton.

Earlier this year, the building was officially reopened by Tony Wilkinson, a former pupil of Repton School and chairman of the high street chain Wilkinson Hardware Stores from 1972 until last year.

The ceremony was organised to mark completion of an £840,000 project to create a new English department for Repton School, making the Old Mitre building a safe structure and providing it with a new lease of life.

Not that its life in the past has been dull. Originally it was a public house, the Mitre Inn, and having served the village as such for many years, became part of Repton School in 1865.

It was bought by the then headmaster of Repton, S A Pears, who needed extra accommodation for the growing number of boys attending the famous public school.

Legend has it that the loose-boxes of the inn became the studies and that the inn yard readily served the purpose of the house yard.

Numbers at Repton School continued to grow and, in 1889, it was extended, with a changing room, reading room, extra studies and dormitories being added to the building.

During this period the Old Mitre was probably named Mr Cattley’s House as school houses took the name of their housemaster and it belonged to the the Rev Arthur Cattley. It was not until 1906 that the school governors purchased the property from him, paying £4,853 15s 7d.

In his autobiography, J R Darling, who was a pupil in New House at Repton from September 1913 to December 1917 and eventually became head of Geelong Grammar School, makes it clear that Cattley was a complete ogre.

However, he adds that when Cattley was teaching Julius Caesar to his set, “it happened that Benson had his company in Derby and was playing the same play. In his cast was an old boy of Cattley’s house, Basil Rathbone, no less, playing Casca, and Cattley took us all into Derby to see him.”

It was in the early part of the 20th century that the left-hand extension of the Old Mitre was added which, according to the book, Repton Remembered, produced by The Repton Village History Group in 1987, upset the local council.

The book says that Repton Rural District Council thought that the bay windows added during the building work in 1916 did not conform with its bye-laws and, as a result, wanted them pulled down. A court action followed and the school won its case.

During its time as a school boarding house, the Old Mitre served as home to some of Repton’s best-known old boys, including the aforementioned actor Basil Rathbone, renowned for his role as Sherlock Holmes in the black and white movies of the 1940s and 50s.

He was a Mitre boy from September 1906 to April 1910.

Olympic gold medal winner Harold Abrahams came to the house as a boarder in 1914 and the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, arrived four years later to add to those who are now among the Old Mitre’s celebrated alumni.

In 1936, it was decided that carrying out any more extension and refurbishment would cost more than building a new house, so the current Mitre House, on Mitre Drive in Repton, was completed in 1937.

From 1936, the building has housed unmarried members of staff and the east wing is still used for this purpose. During the Second World War, it was also used as accommodation for RAF personnel.

In 1991, the building played another important part in the school’s history when its west wing served as home for the first junior girls to attend Repton.

In recent years, the west wing has been used for classrooms, the Combined Cadet Force signals section, an artists’ space, a props department for the theatre and a general storage space.

In 2005, work began on converting it into the home of the school's English department. South Derbyshire District Council’s Conservation Officer, Marilyn Hallard, said: “We are delighted with the outcome. The extension is sensitively designed and the original Old Mitre building has been well repaired and converted. It’s great to see it back in full use and it is an asset to this part of the Repton Conservation area.”

Repton School headmaster Robert Holroyd said: “We are delighted that the west wing of the Old Mitre is now home to six splendid new classrooms. The building is in an excellent location at the centre of the village and will be used by all Reptonians as they pass through the school.

“No doubt among them will be more who will go on to gain wide recognition and respect, adding new chapters to the Old Mitre’s rich history.”

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