Thomas Chaplin

Thomas Chaplin (1767-1823) was a maltster in Harlow and a prominent member of the Baptist congregation at Fore Street. According to the Essex volume of the Report of the Commissioners Appointed in Pursuance of Acts of Parliament ... to inquire concerning Charities and Education of the Poor in England and Wales (1833), in 1802 Chaplin acquired from Montague Burgoyne, Esq., some property in High Street which included a large building erected by Burgoyne for the purpose of a school (176).  By late 1805, Chaplin, with some assistance from John Cowell, was ready to complete the original mission of the property.  Initially, Dissenters and churchmen supported the school, but disagreements arose and by 1811 the school was being run on the British system (that same year Benjamin Flower printed Burgoyne’s A Letter from Montagu Burgoyne Esq. of Mark Hall to John Conyers, Esq. of Copped Hall in the County of Essex). In 1826 the school was educating over 100 students; by 1836, however, it had closed.  That same year, John Barnard, using a bequest left him from the estate of George Fawbert of Waltham Cross, reopened the school, this time as a nondenominational British school (later known as the Fawbert and Barnard School) in Epping (later London) Road. See W. R. Powell, W. R., ed. , A History of the County of Essex (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 146; John L. Fisher, Harlow New Town (Harlow:  Harlow Development Corp., 1951), 70; Thomas Finch, Immediate Preparation for Death Recommended: A Sermon Occasioned by the Decease of the late Thomas Chaplin, Esq. Of Harlow, Essex; Preached the 4th of May, 1823, and printed at the request of the family  (Bishop’s Stortford: W. Thorogood, 1823).