The School History

If you visit the Old School, you will find yourself in a building where boys have been educated continuously for over 500 years.

The King’s School was endowed by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in 1528, although Pevsner in Buildings of England dated the Old School and the Master’s House beside it to 1497. These two buildings, which remain essentially unchanged, were supplemented with a dining room in 1855 and a Long Dorm in 1893 before additions throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries expanded the School to its present capacity.

In the sixteenth century, Grantham’s ‘Free Grammar School of King Edward VI’ would have taught Latin and Greek to perhaps 20 scholars, most of whom would have been local boys.  Indeed, before the expansion of the twentieth century, the School would rarely had more than sixty scholars at a time.  Unfortunately, registration records only go back to 1838 so the only record we have of pupils from prior to this date is in the signatures carved on the window sills and walls of the Old School.  However, we do know from other records of some very significant past pupils from those early years, including Isaac Newton, who attended the School from 1655 to 1660, and William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, Chancellor and advisor to Elizabeth I who was a pupil in 1530.

Commonly, boys would attend between the ages of eight and fourteen.  As numbers increased the Old School room would be divided by huge heavy curtains.  A Drill Master was employed from around 1860 which began the teaching of Physical Education at the school and paved the way for the School Cadet Corps which was established in 1904.