Article by Gordon Gandy
In a regular feature, Radio Warrington’s Gordon Gandy highlights the town’s history. This month he looks at Warrington Grammar School.
Thomas le Boteler, the 15th Baron of Warrington, was outstanding in his personal service to the town.
One of the greatest gifts to the town in his will was the founding of Warrington Grammar School.
He left 500 marks to purchase land for the building of a free grammar school and to pay for the education of six “poor boyes of the parishe”, and for it to endure forever.
This foundation later developed into the Boteler Grammar School for Boys, serving the whole of Warrington.
He died on the 4th of July 1522 during the 14th year of the reign of King Henry VIII.
In 1526, a house in Back Lane (later School Lane/School Brow), and an adjoining croft, was set apart for the schoolmaster and to be called “The School House of Warrington”. This was the beginnings of Warrington Grammar School.
The location was close to the parish church and is consistent with the original foundation as many English Grammar Schools both before and after the Reformation were linked to churches and monastic institutions, with the clergy acting
as teachers.
It was rebuilt on four occasions – 1688, 1707, 1829 and 1862.
By the 1930s, the Boteler school educated girls as well as boys.
In 1936 a new school for boys only was planned at Latchford, to be built by the Warrington Education Committee. The new boys’ school buildings opened on the school’s current site in 1940, while the girls remained at the town centre site.
They were later moved to a new High School for Girls, on a site now occupied by Priestley College.
The 19th century building at School Brow was then used as a storage depot for the works department of the town council until it was demolished to make way for a new housing estate, Sixpenny Fields.
