Walking with the Ancestors - John Bayley

Wellington College

By the late 19th Century, Wellington's reputation as a prosperous centre of commerce and agriculture was second only in Shropshire to the county town of Shrewsbury and proved hugely important to the success of Bayley's new venture. After he handed in his resignation at Constitution Hill, an attempt was made to retain his services as a general manager of all the Board's schools in the area but Bayley refused the offer. Among his reasons for doing so, he cited the encouragement he had received from a number of the town's increasingly wealthy residents to found a new educational establishment as a decisive factor in his decision.

Apart from providing him with potential pupils, the families who had gained most from the area's rapid commercial growth also proved to be an important source of funds in enabling the physical growth of Bayley's enterprise, much of which was completed by 1913. Among his most important benefactors was the Bridge Road timber merchant and Wellington School Board member Richard Groom of Dothill Park. He provided funds, in the form of a mortgage, for Bayley to acquire land to complete his building programme, a large area of which had belonged to the Lilleshall Estate, a fact commemorated in the name Sutherland Avenue, one of several roads running through the college grounds.