AS the school attended by Harry Potter, Hogwarts is one of world's the best known fictional seats of learning thanks to the author JK Rowling, but the origin of its name can perhaps be traced back to a Devon school.

Although JK Rowling claims the name came after she saw a hogwort plant at Kew Gardens, she was not the first to use it.

Mike Sampson, the archivist at Blundell's School, says the word was first used more than 40 years before the Potter books, in 1954 by a former Blundell's pupil, Geoffrey Willans, in his hilarious book How To Be Topp.

The 'hero', Nigel Molesworth – a schoolboy known as the Curse of St Custards – mentions a fictitious Latin play called The Hogwarts written by Marcus Plautus Molesworthus (himself). And later the headmaster of Porridge Court, St Custard's rival school, is named as Mr Hoggwart.

Mike says it is possible Rowling read the book as a child and the name, lodged in her memory, was revived when she began writing.

Geoffrey Willans was a boarder at Blundell's from 1924 to 1929, and later became a schoolmaster, joining forces with cartoonist Ronald Searle to produce the Molesworth stories for Punch magazine. They were later published in a book Down With Skool! in 1953, followed by How To Be Topp, Wizz For Atomms, and Back In The Jug Agane.