Lawrence went to Nottingham High School in 1898, when he won a county scholarship at the age of 13. He stayed there for three years, until he left to find work in 1901. Although the school records show him doing well in many subjects, it was clearly a financial strain for the family to pay for his season ticket and other expenses. At this time the school was much smaller than it is today, although its academic reputation was growing.
It is puzzling that Lawrence makes little use of his experience there in his novels. In the most autobiographical, Sons and Lovers, Paul seems to go straight from Board School to work, and it is only in The Rainbow when Ursula goes to school in Nottingham that his experiences seem to have been re-created, when she feels elation at escaping from the confines of her limited local school.
It has been suggested that Lawrence was unhappy in the middle-class atmosphere of the school, but this idea may be false. He was not the only boy on a scholarship, and it seems that he was part of a group who travelled together from Kimberley ever day.
This year the High School celebrates its 500th anniversary, and it now highlights the fact that Lawrence was a student there - something that it has not always mentioned. But How he felt about the school remains something of a mystery.
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