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Gresham's School is a public school (English fee-charging boarding and day school) in Holt, Norfolk, England, one of the top twenty International Baccalaureate schools in England.
The school was founded in 1555 by Sir John Gresham as a free grammar school for forty boys, following King Henry VIII's dissolution of Beeston Priory. The founder left the school's endowments in the hands of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers of the City of London, who are still the school's trustees.
In the 1890s, an increase in the rental income of property in the City of London led to a major expansion of the school, building on land that it already owned at the eastern edge of Holt, including several new boarding houses as well as new teaching buildings, library, and chapel.
Gresham's admitted girls from 1971 and is now fully co-educational. As well as its senior school, it operates a preparatory and a nursery and pre-prep school, the latter now in the Old School House, the historic home of the school. Altogether, the three schools teach about eight hundred children.
In September 2025, Tatler shortlisted Gresham's for its Tatler Schools Awards 2026 "Best Public School" title, together with Eton, Brighton, Canford, and Caterham. In October, it was announced that Gresham's had won the title.
Gresham's School, Holt, was founded by Sir John Gresham, who obtained letters patent in 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 of St Mary in the Meadow, Beeston Regis, 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 neighbourhood 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 the City 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-without-Cripplegate, London. Close links with the Fishmongers' Company continue to the present.
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, Thomas Cooper, 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 the Holt 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 18th century.
In 1729, the Fishmongers' Company presented the school with "...a valuable and useful library, not only of the best editions of the Classics and Lexicographers, but also with some books of Antiquities, Chronology, and Geography, together with a suitable pair of globes". By the 18th century, references to fish were hard to find in the court minutes of the Fishmongers' Company, and the company's main business had become managing its extensive property and administering its charities and trusts, such as the school at Holt and St Peter's Hospital, an almshouse at Newington in Surrey.
For the period 1704 to 1750, Charles Linnell analysed the 'Status of fathers of boys at Holt Grammar School' in his Gresham's School History and Register (1955): "Sons of gentlemen 10%, clergy 30%, professional men 5%, tradesmen 20%, plebeian 15%, unknown 20%".
One of the school's 18th-century heads was John Holmes, appointed at the age of twenty-seven, a prolific writer of educational textbooks, who led the school between 1730 and his death in 1760.
In the 19th century, boys were strictly required to attend services at the Holt parish church, and in November 1815 a boy called Charles Loynes was "expelled for non-attendance at church".
In 1823, the expenditure of the Fishmongers' Company on the school was £367, of which £158-10s-0d was for the master's salary, allowances and gratuities, £80 for the Usher's salary, board and lodging, £52-11s-6d for repairs, £22-12s-6d for taxes, £15-15s-6d for poor rates, £12-10s-0d for coals, £9-13s-4d for two-thirds of the cost of the school books, and £6-6s-0d for a School Feast which took place in June.
In 1836, the 'Wardens and Commonalty of the Art and Mystery of Fishmongers of the City of London' held an insurance policy for 'Other property or occupiers: Free Grammar School Holt Norfolk (Rev Benn. Pulleyn)' with the Sun Fire Office.
In his History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies of London (1836), William Herbert says of the school:
GRESHAM'S. - At Holt, in Norfolk. For fifty free scholars, chosen from the town of Holt and neighbourhood, and admitted at six and seven years old. The nomination is in the Fishmongers' Company, in whom also is left the patronage and government of the school.
Herbert also notes that the officers of the court of the Fishmongers' Company include "a steward of the Holt free school, in Norfolk". John William Burgon, in The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham (1839), after listing the estates with which Sir John Gresham endowed the school, says
Had the trustees of this school been formerly distinguished for the same vigilance which characterizes their representatives at the present day, it would not have been our painful duty to state, that of the extensive demesnes with which Holt grammar-school was endowed by its founder – sufficient, had they been properly managed, to have set it on a level with the first establishments of a similar nature in England – there remains at present but 162 acres (0.66 km2) of land. Its total revenue amounts to not quite 350l., about two-thirds of which arise from its estates in London.
Burgon goes on, however, to add
Notwithstanding every disadvantage, this school, liberally conducted, and regulated by salutary statutes, is in a flourishing condition at the present day, and educates fifty free-scholars; to any one of whom removing to either of the universities, an annual exhibition of 20l. is allowed... Holt school... is an ornament and a blessing to the county, and reflects much credit on the trustees and its worthy principal—the Rev. B. Pulleyne.
In 1859, the Gresham Grammar School was closed while its site was substantially rebuilt and converted, providing accommodation for boarders. It re-opened on 30 July 1860.
In 1880, a commission was appointed to enquire into the Livery companies of the City of London. When it published its first reports in 1881, the following formed part of a 'Supplementary Statement on behalf of the Fishmongers' Company' included in Volume 1:
In the case of Sir John Gresham's Grammar School at Holt, in Norfolk, the Company have from time to time supplemented the trust funds, especially for the purposes of rebuilding and repairs, the amount in which the trust was indebted to the Company, at a not very distant date, having been over 10,000£., and this notwithstanding the constant warnings of the Charity Commissioners that the Company were doing this at their own risk, and that they could in no case be permitted to apply any part of the capital of the trust funds in repayment of their advances; nor any part of the trust income, except within a period of 30 years.
In the early 1900s, under an ambitious headmaster called George Howson (who had moved to Gresham's from Uppingham), the school expanded onto a new campus of some 200 acres (0.81 km2) at the eastern edge of the town, while keeping the Old School House as one of its houses. When Howson arrived at Gresham's, he found it in numbers much as it had been when founded in 1555: in 1900 there were only forty Holt Scholars, plus seven boarders.
The New School (by the architect Sir John Simpson) was opened by Sir Evelyn Wood on 30 September 1903. This consisted of School House (renamed as Howson's in 1919) and the Main Building, including the Big School hall. Woodlands was acquired and opened as a new house in 1905, the school's first swimming pool was opened in 1907, and Farfield was built in 1911. The School Chapel was completed in 1916, during the Great War, during which one hundred and six Old Greshamians were killed.
Under Howson's successor as headmaster, J. R. Eccles, Gresham's appears to have been one of the first schools in England to abolish corporal punishment. In March 1921, Eccles wrote to The Times and "condemned corporal punishment of any kind". His letter is not, however, evidence of permanent abolition at Gresham's.
The Thatched Buildings, the gift of Eccles, were opened by Sir Arthur Shipley in February 1921.
In 1923, Sir Harry Brittain asked Edward Wood, President of the Board of Education in the House of Commons "whether he will explain why Gresham's school, Holt, was admitted to the benefits of the Superannuation Act although it is an endowed school, owning all its buildings and supported by a wealthy city company?"
A new school library, designed by the architect Alan E. Munby, was opened in 1931 by Field Marshal Lord Milne.
In the 1930s, there were three categories of scholarship in the senior school: Holt A scholarships gave complete exemption from fees, County Scholarships were worth £100 a year, and Fishmongers' Company Open Scholarships were worth £50 a year.
In June 1940, soon after the end of the "Phoney War" stage of the Second World War, the school was evacuated to Newquay in Cornwall. In December 1944, it packed its belongings for the return to Holt and re-opened there in January 1945.
Martin Burgess's memories of Gresham's during the freezing months of January to March 1947, the coldest British winter on record, are quoted at length in I Will Plant Me a Tree (2002). Not only was the winter icy cold, but because of fuel shortages, the school was unheated. Burgess recalls that "Periods were held in full overcoats and scarves and gloves. If it happened now the School would be closed, but such a step was not even thought of then. In any case, the roads were blocked... One day the School was called out to dig out a farm, or was it a small village? Hurrah! No periods! In the afternoon everyone prayed there would be periods, it was so cold. A man had died."
Under the long headship of Logie Bruce Lockhart (1955–1982), there was a further period of change and expansion. Kenwyn, a new Junior School House, was built and opened in 1958. The bridge over Cromer Road was opened in 1962 and was initiated after the death of Kirsty, LBL's daughter, while crossing Cromer Road in front of Howson's. Tallis, a new boys' house named after John Tallis, Master of the school for more than thirty years in the first half of the seventeenth century, was built and opened in 1963, as were the biology classrooms and music rooms. Oakeley became the first girls' house in 1971 when girls were first admitted to the Sixth Form only. The school became fully co-educational in the 1970s.
There are now four boarding houses for boys and three for girls (see "Houses" section below), as well as a wide range of buildings. These include Big School, the School Chapel, the Auden Theatre, the Cairns Centre, the School Library, the Music Centre, the Central Block, the Thatched Classrooms, the Reith Laboratories, the Biology Building, the Armoury and others.
In February 2005, Gresham's School's 450th anniversary was marked by a service at Norwich Cathedral attended by the school's Patron, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and 1,500 past and present Greshamians. In July 2005, the Eastern Daily Press called it "a school which changed the world".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Gresham's School”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.