The original school building was restored in the eighteenth century and remained the sole classroom for 300 years. In 1749 a case involving payment of rates recorded that "the school of Uppingham is not nor hath been of equal repute with that of Oakham." The headmastership of Dr John Doncaster (1808–46), himself a previous pupil at the school, saw the school advance academically: "This was the man who returned to his old school at the age of thirty-six, with University honours and university experience, to give it fresh life, and to set a mark on it which it never quite lost". Even so, numbers attending were well below 50, and while Uppingham flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century, Oakham did not to the same extent. Even so, in 1869 Oakham was one of the founding members of the Headmasters' Conference (HMC). In 1875 as a result of the Endowed Schools Act that threatened the continued existence of the school, there were just 2 day boys and 2 boarders in the school. The exhausted headmaster, William Spicer Wood (1846–75), retired and the new headmaster lasted just three years before being dismissed.