Gresham's School
Gresham’s School is an independent coeducational boarding school at Holt in North Norfolk, England, founded in the year 1555, a member of the HMC.
Gresham's School at Holt was founded by Sir John Gresham by letters patent of 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary I. For its home he gave the school his manor house at Holt, which he had bought in 1546 from his elder brother Sir William Gresham.
The founding of Gresham's was connected to King Henry VIII's suppression of the Priory of Augustinian canons at Beeston Regis in June 1539. The priory, established in 1216, had operated a school which John Gresham and his brothers probably attended, but the school came to an end with the priory, leaving no provision for education in the vicinity of Holt.
The new school opened and was granted a Royal Charter in 1562. By the letters patent of 1555, the school was called in full 'The Free Grammar School of Sir John Gresham, knight, citizen and alderman of London'. The founder endowed Gresham's generously, placing its property in trust with the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers of London, and full estate records dating from the school's foundation are held at the Guildhall Library. Sir John Gresham's endowments included his freehold property in Holt and Letheringsett, his wood and land called Prior's Grove, his manors of Pereers and Holt Hales, "with all and singular to the same belonging, situate in Holt, Sherington, Letheringsett, Bodham, Kellinge, Wayborne, Semlingham, Stodrye, Bantrye, and West Wickham, in the said county of Norfolk", and also tenements called 'The White Hind' and 'The Peacock' in the parish of St Giles's Without, Cripplegate, in the City of London. Close links with the Fishmongers' Company continue to this day.
By his Will of 1601, Leonard Smith, a fishmonger of London, left £120 and all his goods to establish a fellowship at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and in 1604 'Mr Smith's Fellowship' was confirmed by the College, with the provision that "scholars from the Grammar School of Holt, in Norfolk" were to have preference.
The School Library contains the Foundation Library, a collection of books and manuscripts provided at the school's establishment in 1555 and later.
On Christmas Day 1650, the Reverend Thomas Cooper, MA, a former usher of Gresham's, was hanged for his part in a Royalist rebellion on behalf of Charles II. His body was left hanging on a gibbet in Holt's Market Place.
For three hundred and fifty years, the School was based in what is now called the Old School House, or "Osh", the former manor house of Holt overlooking the Market Place in the town centre. In 1708, the school escaped a major fire which destroyed most of the rest of the mediaeval town of Holt. This resulted in most of the buildings now to be seen in the town centre belonging to the eighteenth century.
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