The earliest certain evidence of the school comes from the 1550s (so it may already have been in existence at the beginning of the period), although significant endowments are to be dated to 1640s and 1650s. VCH, Cheshire, 3.226-6. See also Gastrell, Notitia Cestrienses, I, 208, which identifies 1655 bequest as the chief and founding endowment.