Roger de Coverly wrote:
As far as the UK is concerned, chess in schools has a really long history, but just how far back does it go? There was a formal inter-schools competition with the Sunday Times, introduced in the 1950s, the original idea for which I believe dated back to the 1930s.
But what was there before that? ...inter-school sport, provided chess was classified that way, goes back to the Victorian era.
I cannot tell you when inter-school chess matches were first played over the board but almost certainly the earliest matches were by post. There are several references (indexed) in my book "Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland, 1824-1987."
During World War One, the BCF instituted a CC competition for public schools but indeed the idea does go back to the Victorian era.
In his "A Century of British Chess" P. W. Sergeant wrote that the earliest inter-school match was Norwich v Felsted in 1874 but there were several earlier examples. The Illustrated London News, 29 December 1849, has a correspondence game Shrewsbury School versus Brighton College though it may not be the earliest as Staunton said he had received other games (see pages 44-45 in my book).
Then in 1851 and 1852 there were published games between Wellesley House School in Twickenham against King's College School. It wasn't clear whether the latter was in Cambridge or London; can anyone clarify?
Tim Harding
Historian and FIDE Arbiter
Author of 'Steinitz in London,' British Chess Literature to 1914', 'Joseph Henry Blackburne: A Chess Biography', and 'Eminent Victorian Chess Players'
http://www.chessmail.com