Bourne Archive: Old Grammar School
2
http://boar.org.uk/abiwxo2OGrammarS2.htm Latest
edit 4 May 2011
©R.J.PENHEY 2006
The
Development of the
Part 2
The school was established on a
new footing in 1636. William Trollope
left an endowment of £30 a year to maintain an honest, learned and godly
schoolmaster in a school built by Trollope.
It was to be a grammar school incorporated by royal charter and called “The
Free Grammar School of King Charles in the town of
By looking at
the visible part of the structure and reading it as an archaeological document,
it is possible to add the information it contains to that of the historians’
documents. There is no reason to think that any of it is earlier than the
seventeenth century. The two gable walls
(north and south) are consistent with a date in the 1620s or 30s. However, the two longer, side walls have been
rebuilt in the mid eighteenth century.
At this stage, the ground plan was reduced, apparently to reduce the
span of the roof. The nature of the
rebuilding leads to the suspicion that the earlier roof was poorly designed,
having inadequate ties. This will have
led to a spreading of the side walls and to the need for their
replacement. The east wall was rebuilt
leaving the two end walls projecting in the form of buttresses, which were from
a structural point of view, completely unnecessary but by leaving them, the
re-builder kept the symmetrical appearance of the ends of the building. This
included the retention of the quoins on the north-east and south-east
corners. The outer and east faces of the
new buttresses were already largely faced with ashlar in the form of the
earlier quoins but the raw wounds on their inner sides, were faced with ashlar
during the rebuild.
The stone plinth of the eastern
wall was moved inwards to form the base of the new wall. This was constructed of early to mid
eighteenth century red brick with some vitrified headers. It had three windows with the utilitarian segment
arches of the period. The earlier stone
cornice was re-used. The west wall was
rebuilt on the line of the earlier one, re-using the old stone door architrave
at the centre, but with an eighteenth century segmental-arched window opening
each side of it. On this wall, above the
stone plinth are two courses of limestone ashlar along its length except where the
old brickwork remained keyed into the quoins at the two ends of the new wall. Above the new ashlar, on the west wall, there
have been several insertions of second hand and new brick during the course of
twentieth century repairs. These are
done with various but generally fairly weak Portland cement mortar while most
of the pointing is of lime mortar. That on the older, end walls is now rather
eroded by weather and masonry bees.
Birkbeck (p 73) gives a date of 1736 for the school’s rebuilding.
“In 1736 we find a builder, George Portwood,
presenting his bill — ‘Being for pulling-down and rebuilding the free-Schoole House at Bourn.’”
The Trollope Charity trustees were doing things at
this period, as the ‘Tudor’ Cottages date from 1738. Their architectural details
have much in common with the rebuilt parts of the school.
In 1807, (Birkbeck p. 102) the chancel of the church was very largely rebuilt from
the ruin which had been there. One might have expected this to have been left
by the stripping of the monastic parts of the abbey building immediately after
the dissolution. (In effect, Birkbeck p 30, quotes the
1536 scrap value as having been assessed at £121 10s.) . However, in
reality the ruination seems to have come at the end of 1643. (see here) The little
doorway in the south wall of the chancel seems to date stylistically from the
date of the original building of the school in the 1620s. Besides, before the Dissolution,
it would have been badly placed for giving access to the school, even were that
on its present site. It looks as though the early seventeenth century vicar or
curate needed to attend to the offices in the chancel and to the boys in the
school. It has to be noted however, that a door in the south wall of the
chancel of a parish church is by no means unusual. Its usefulness seems to have
been independent of 
the presence of a nearby school.
Birkbeck (p 107) suggests that the windows in the end walls of the
school were inserted around 1876 but they are both central in the seventeenth
century wall rather than in the narrower, eighteenth century room inside, as
they would probably be if inserted after that date. Further, the brickwork looks to have been
laid against the stonework of the windows, rather than there being bricks cut
short by later window insertion. It
seems likely that the replacement of windows in the 1870s was one of glass and
casements rather than of the stone structure of mullions and transoms.
The stove chimney, built in 1881 (Birkbeck p 107) against the outside of the east wall, obscured the
middle window, leaving the ends of its arch visible. The chimney is in large, local, handmade, red
bricks. (Pictured to the right)
The difference between the eighteenth
century work and the seventeenth century bricks of the ends of the building can
be seen clearly in these photographs of the two ends of the west wall.
This picture in
high resolution.
